Will Donating Blood Affect My Running? | GTN Coach's Corner

How do you maintain run fitness when focusing on cycle racing? How quickly can I return to previous run training post-injury? Why does using a pull buoy unbalance your stroke? Will donating blood affect my performance? How to swim slower whilst maintaining form? We answer your #gtncoachescorner questions!
0:00 Intro
0:28 One Run A Week Focus
2:37 Getting Back Into Running
5:06 Pull Buoy Problems
7:04 Donating Blood Before Racing
9:56 Swim Slow, But Maintain Form
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[@gtn]

Have another question you need an answer to? Leave them under any GTN video with #gtncoachescorner and we will try and answer!

[@nickc4716]

Blood donation needs a bigger video I think. I donate 1/year in November but even that feels that it takes a while to get lost (inhibited) training time back.

[@gtn]

We'll have a think and see what we can do 🙂

[@PaulioNZ]

@@gtn I would also like you to talk about the differences between donating blood and donating Plasma. You might need to consult a specialist? I donate Plasma every 2 weeks and the difference is huge. Donating plasma-only, means you get your Red Blood Cells returned back to you, so you don't suffer any of the fatigue that you get from donating blood.
While I don't do anything on the day of the donation, the next day I'm fine to do a light-medium training session and 2-3 days later, back to full fitness again, tempo running & both run/bike interval sessions.
This is a great option for athletes who want to donate but don't want to suffer the fatigue. I'm up to over 160 donations now! You also get fed snacks which is a great bonus :D

[@asifdarofficial]

Excellent

[@life_with-hani26]

Agree

[@panzerveps]

I donate blood 4 times a year, and I've found that donating on the 1st day of my rest week is optimal.

[@collindwebb]

A couple of more details for anyone wanting to do endurance training and blood donation (I'm currently writing a paper on this...)
After giving blood it takes a few months for hemoglobin to get back to normal, unless you take an iron supplement -- in which case it will be back to normal in 4 weeks. This has mostly been studied in depth with whole blood donation and not double red, so it might take longer if donating double red.
VO2max goes back to pretty close to normal 4 weeks after whole blood donation without supplementation.
Careful about supplementing with too much iron, as people with too high (over 200 µg/L) or too low (below about 75 µg/L) levels of ferritin have an increased all-cause mortality, and donating blood can be a good way to reduce ferritin. The exact numbers for what is healthy haven't been identified as far as I can tell.
Endurance training will also increase blood volume. Olympic level marathon runners have about 40% more blood volume than they would otherwise. So if you want to give blood, but have a hard time doing it, endurance training can make it easier.
Reducing blood volume (through phlebotomy) after endurance training to pre-trained levels shows that higher levels of red blood cell count and blood volume may account for improvements of: a bit more than 1/3rd of power, 3/4th of VO2 peak, and all of cardiac output. (This was shown by taking untrained people, testing them, training them for a few months, testing them again, then removing the amount of increased blood volume they had gained during that training(measuring their blood volume was part of the first two tests), and testing them again.)
Because of the above, it might be easier to over-train after giving blood, but this has not been studied. The week after donating may be a good week for a deload week just in case.

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[@kmetz878]

I regularly donate blood, and I've found that the sluggishness lasts a couple of weeks - like they said, you just feel like you can't push yourself as hard during that time because you get tired easier. It can be frustrating if you're trying to improve your times. This year I'm going to try donating only after my last race, which I figure is just as well because blood donations generally go down during the winter months anyway so if you're only going to donate part of the year, that's a good time to do it.

[@dri1811ya]

4-6 weeks is about in line with my experience. Especially the first two weeks or so after a donation, workouts felt really brutal. I read somewhere that your Vo2max can drop by up to 20%.
Would it be better to donate just after a goal race?

[@panzerveps]

I donate as often as I can (every 3 months) and I try to time it with my rest week. I take high concentration iron supplements for 2-3 weeks afterwards, so I don't feel much of the blood loss the week after.

[@Shurik457]

really good questions answered, thanks so much

[@TheGoldMind_]

Finally the answer I've been looking for!

[@hornetluca]

Instead of donating blood you could donate plasma. I think it has less impact on your near future sport performances

[@PaulioNZ]

Yes I do this, I donate Plasma consistently every 2 weeks and suffer no fatigue, it's great!

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[@melaniecombs]

Thanks for addressing this common concern for runners, it's good to know that donating blood won't have a significant impact on my training.

[@collindwebb]

If you take an iron supplement, red blood cells will completely replenish and VO2max can return after 4 weeks. And only take the supplement for those 4 weeks, as having too high of non-hemoglobin iron in the blood (ferritin) has been shown to be unhealthy.

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