Alcohol and athletics often go hand in hand: A good beer after a ride or an end-of-the-season team celebration at a bar are just a few examples of how athletes commune over a nice adult beverage. While drinking alcohol may be part of the lifestyle of many cyclists, staying away from it for key races (or other big rides) can set you up for success and improve your performance and fun on race day.
Here’s how alcohol can affect athletic performance, according to research and a sports medicine doctor for a pro cycling team, and how to best time to stop alcohol consumption when it comes to workouts and rides.
Risks to Drinking Alcohol Before a Race
Drinking alcohol has several effects on the body, all of which are, unfortunately, negative. There may be other compounds in certain alcoholic beverages that have beneficial properties, such as wine having flavanols which contribute to lowering inflammation. But alcohol itself is treated as a toxin by the body and is filtered through the liver the same way rat poison is processed—to put things into perspective.
More From Bicycling
A few of the negative physiological effects alcohol has on performance include acute and long-lasting dehydration, impaired glycogen replenishment and storage, lower sleep quality, and muscle protein breakdown.
One small study on 12 individuals published earlier this year in The International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance also found that drinking the day before an intense workout decreased time to exhaustion, meaning you tire out faster.
To put it more broadly, the American College of Sports Medicine position stand states that alcohol use may impair strength, power, muscular endurance, speed, and cardiovascular endurance. There are also more indirect impacts drinking alcohol has on performance, including impaired decision making with regards to areas like personal safety and food choices.
An increased risk of injury is one of the biggest downsides for athletes drinking alcohol. A study published in 2000 in the journal Sports Medicine found that the rate of injury incidence for athletes who drink alcohol was 54.8 percent versus 23.5 percent for those who did not drink alcohol. The study authors purport that this higher injury risk may be due to having a hangover, which can impair athletic performance by 11.4 percent.
Alcohol clearly has several detrimental effects on health, performance, and safety of athletes. That being said, many athletes aren’t going to stop drinking altogether, so let’s talk about the timing of alcohol consumption.
When to Stop Drinking Alcohol Before a Race
“Don’t drink 48 hours before, and at a minimum 24 hours before, [a] race. And especially don’t get drunk,” says Kelby Bethards, M.D., sports medicine doctor for the UCI ProTeam Human Powered Health.
“Athletes have reduced glycogen storage the day after drinking,” Bethards says, which is one of the main reasons for the 48-hour recommendation. Having low glycogen feels like heavy legs, not having any more power, and overall body fatigue. If you’ve experienced these symptoms during short or long rides, you’ve experienced low glycogen.
Something to keep in mind is that the negative effects of alcohol are dose-dependent and to a certain degree athlete-specific. One athlete may metabolize alcohol much faster than another athlete, and the detrimental effects will manifest accordingly. This isn’t to say that if you think the alcohol isn’t affecting your performance, it isn’t, but rather that the effects of alcohol are compounding: More alcohol leads to more negative effects.
How Alcohol Affects Workout Recovery
If you’re riding and training regularly, alcohol may have a lasting effect on your ability to recover and perform even a few days later.
Researchers who published a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology in 2010 looked at how consuming alcohol after a single-leg strength workout affected performance and recovery in the following days. They found that consuming one serving of alcohol 30 minutes after a workout, even after eating a meal, significantly and negatively affected performance and soreness in the exercised muscles 36 hours later—but showed no significant effect 60 hours later.
This suggests that alcohol may inhibit muscle recovery and performance even when consumed a day or two prior to an activity if you are riding and training regularly.
Other studies show that alcohol can interfere specifically with muscle protein synthesis, even when you drink while having some protein. This messes with rebuilding and recovery, and can then keep you from gaining the benefits of a workout.
How Alcohol Affects Your Sleep
Another factor to consider when drinking alcohol is how it affects your sleep. While many may think alcohol improves their sleep, it doesn’t really work that way.
Alcohol acts as a sedative and therefore can reduce the amount of time it takes to fall asleep—which is why some people might think it helps them get shut-eye—but it then leads to poor sleep quality throughout the night, according to a study in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology in 2014. Another study, published in Public Health Nutrition in 2020, backs this up with researchers finding an association between higher alcohol consumption and poorer sleep quality (especially when drinking liquor), as well as a link between alcohol consumption and higher odds of snoring and shorter sleep duration.
What’s more: While exercise has been known to benefit sleep, alcohol can actually diminish these benefits, according to another small study published in the journal Sleep.
Many athletes struggle to sleep the night before a big race, but adding fuel to this fire with alcohol could make the effects of low sleep quality even worse.
Alcohol and Athletic Performance: The Bottom Line
In summary, drinking the night before and being hungover on race day won’t just make you feel like crap and impede your performance, it’ll also increase your risk of injury and compromised safety. So, it’s safe to say you should avoid alcohol ideally 48 hours before a race, and especially the night before, in order to have better endurance, power, and energy on race day.
Kristen Arnold is a board-certified sports dietitian specializing in sports nutrition for women. She owns a private practice working with clients one-on-one and in group settings from the recreational to professional level in sport. She is also a Level 2 USA Cycling coach with Source Endurance LLC, a retired professional road cyclist of 7 years, and a current team sport director for domestic elite women's professional cycling team Wolfpack p/b ProBikeKit. Through all of these pursuits she fulfills her passion for enhancing the health and performance of active people and communities.
