Alcohol

Why not? It depends on what i'm doing to how much i drink. At the moment i havent touched alcohol for 6 weeks but next week i know that i'll have a couple of glasses.

Take into consideration that when i was training with a club in Germany it was common to have a beer at the end of a race as "refuel". There's a scientific study that says a beer is a great refuel after a run.

From what you have written it seems to be happening on its own. You may find yourself stopping all together with no effort at all. If so then you would have just found something you like more than drinking.

Running

I found that when I started running I cut down without even thinking about it. When I got injured for 3 months I was straight back on it, binge-drinking 1-2 times a week, every week.

Sure enough, when my knee was better I started cutting down again. I'm staying in tonight so that I can go out a run tomorrow because thinking about it, I would rather go a run tomorrow that go out tonight. It wasn't a hard choice either.

Yeah, like a few here, I've almost completely stopped drinking all together since taking up running, it just doesn't taste that good any more, I'd rather spend money on running gear than a pint.  I still might have 1 or 2 bottles of the local ale every 1 or 2 weeks but other than that nothing usually.

There was me thinking I was the only one.

I could be out tonight at a house party but....I had a really good parkrun today and want to get out early tomorrow for a nice recovery run. Good runs encourage you, and eventually bad runs will too.

No amount of good wine women and song will make you feel like you will when you break a personal best.

Non-runners talk of running being just another addiction like drink can be.  Thats a false metaphor simular to saying your addicted to breathing or water. Its no accident that runners are often teetotal or occasional drinkers. Human bodies evolved to move laterally over distance. Those legs, that curved back, the way we get all smiley when we run for the bus and catch it, that little buzzy feeling in our head. a moments clarity, soon to be dulled behind an office desk.

That ladies and gentlemen is your true nature.

I quit drinking completly but then again I had a drink problem.  See the thread giving up the booze.

MuddyPaws wrote (see)

Also the less you drink the greater the effect of the alcohol on you... One glass of wine goes straight to my head !

The people I work with laugth at me when I say I'm on my arse after 1 pint these days, but I personally don't see this as a bad thing.  For 1 thing I'm probably fitter than the vast majority of colleagues, another I've probably got a lot more awards for my racing than they have for drinking, and last of all I'll always go home with change of a £5 note.

I saw a runner with a T-shirt once:

"Those who give up drinking for running deserve neither"

Beer is only carbs and water and you burn off those aplenty when you run loads. Obviously don't do binge drinking which taxes your liver etc, but anything within the weekly unit limit is more than fine, possibly beneficial.

I have to admit -when I compare drinking to a good run -doesnt come close. But that could just be me... i get told i'm crazy for getting up early to run, crazy for taking my gear away on holiday..... i guess i'm just crazy for being a runner.

As i said - when i trained in Germany, they used to give out beer at the end of the club run - and everyone had one. It was just the way it was done. In Belgium - some of the runs i've tried with clubs are similar - you either eat a pancake or drink a beer.

I gave up drinking for lent (not that I'm religious more keen for the challenge) it wasn't that hard and I'm quite fond of a pint or two. I think total abstinence isn't a good idea though. There is lots of studies that relate moderated alcohol consumption to be beneficial to health (not that I can name them) but I think it's better to drink moderately and regularly than heavily and infrequent because the liver can't cope with sudden increase. In fact I've heard that sudden binges are more damaging than regular heavy drinking as the liver learns to process the alcohol within reason. 

RW ran an article about beer being the perfect post exercise drink. It replaces lost carbs and re-hydrates quicker than most sports drinks. The alcohol thins the blood out and there are antioxidant properties as well. I think I've read that darker beers have more antioxidants than light but a cooled Speckled Hen just hits the spot for me after a run in the sun.

JBiT (very much in the pro camp, possibly even in the beer tent of the pro camp)

'Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy' Benjamin Franklin 1779

Intermanaut wrote (see)

"...just half a bottle of wine..." Brilliant. Going on your figure of a half a bottle five times a week, you're pretty much smack on, or just over, the weekly recommending safe limit and you reckon that's "just".