YOU BOOZE, YOU LOSE?

Most of us like a drink, at least occasionally. But doesboozing undo the fitness gains we work so hard for? Chris Marshall-Bell investigates

- David Lyttleton

You’ve just completed a hard week’s training, you know your fitness is improving, but that shelf-full of ice-cold beers in the fridge is an irresistible temptation. You’d planned on treating yourself to just one or two, but two leads to three leads to four… and the next day your head is throbbing; you feel physically wretched. Rightly or wrongly, for many of us drinking has been a go-to stress-buster during the lockdown, helping to ease the monotony and tensions. But few of us drink without an accompanying twinge of guilt or worry about the effects on our fitness.

The morning after a heavier-than planned boozing session, as you lounge around in Planet Pity, you utter the empty pledge: “I’m never drinking again” – making you a sitting duck for sarcasm when you next raise a drink to your lips. But should you make a firm commitment to drinking less? Or should you, for the sake of your cycling, stop drinking alcohol altogether?

At the start of the year, it was revealed that riders and all staff from WorldTour team Lotto-Soudal have been banned from drinking during key blocks of training and races (except for small amounts following a victory or birthday). In doing so, they put the age-old conundrum back at the forefront in the minds of amateur and professional cyclists: I enjoy a drink, but is it harming my riding?

The science is indisputably clear. “There are no nutritional benefits of alcohol whatsoever,” David Cameron-Smith, Professor of Nutrition at the Singapore Institute of Clinical Sciences, tells Cycling Weekly.

The facts that count against alcohol are almost overwhelming: the body cannot convert alcohol into glycogen, the essential fuel source necessary for exercise; instead, the body either burns it off or converts it into fat and stores it in fatty tissue.