No, I don’t mean hydration. I mean draaanking drinking. Like alcoholic beverages.
I’ve found in the past year or two as I have become more “serious” as a runner, I have all but stopped drinking. I’m sure part of it began as college wound down and I lost interest in drinking just for the sake of drinking. But at some point there was a shift in my viewpoint as well: not only is alcohol not worth the money wasted to me, but now that I’m a lightweight it is also not worth the risk that I will wake up with a hangover that will in turn get in the way of a planned run (those who knew me in college know that I was NOT a lightweight before, and I never got a hangover).
So it’s not that I am completely sober or that I’m against drinking in any way, I just don’t really do it on the regular. I can literally count on one hand the number of drinks I have in a given month. (Is this what your mid-twenties feels like??) With the exception of special occasions, such as Outside Lands, having one drink in a week is a special kind of feat for me now. I’ve talked to a variety of people near me about it, and I am finding more and more of my friends and family feel similarly. We don’t care enough or we realize how much better we feel not drinking.
I wonder if a lot of people in the running community have taken a similar stance, or if as healthy lifestyles become more mainstream in US culture this is becoming a pattern. I’d love to hear how other people feel about the balance between drinking and running in their lives. I know that there are those runners who can run a race and then proceed to drink beer or wine, and I’m curious how they do it.