After another poor training run with the Roadrunner, I decided to investigate the effects of giving blood on athletic performance. And given todays session I use the term loosely.

The following scared me a little “A healthy person should be able to recover completely from donating blood in eight weeks, but you may lose some of your ability to train for a few days.” (from http://drmirkin.blogspot.com ). 8 Weeks! I have a 10k next Monday, Hairy Legs on the Sunday after, and the South Downs Marathon in 6 weeks after that! “donating blood markedly reduces competitive performance for three to four weeks as it takes that long for blood hemoglobin levels to return to normal” that would explain a lot….

Rather worryingly, the rest of the Internet (the fount of all knowledge, lead by the inestimable Professor Google) seems to agree. Cycling Weekly concurs “We asked the Blood Donor agency for their answer for that particular feature. They reccomended [sic] not training for the day you gave blood and to stick to very light training for another week. It will take several weeks to re-build your blood levels” (and I have always wanted to use a [sic]).

Runners World forums agree that you should probably leave it a bit. “Personally I would not train at all for 48-72 hours after”.

So there you go. One possible excuse for me. I may not be getting old after all….