It can take people a few days to many weeks to recover from whole blood donation. Likely you will feel better soon. Eat some red meat.

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Ian

It takes me a few weeks to feel normal again.

What you did is pretty much the exact opposite of blood doping. It'll take some time to be back to normal.

That's why I prefer to donate blood plasma instead of blood. If you drink enough during the donation and afterwards, there are almost no side-effects.



To be honest, I only do it for the stroopwafels you get while you're there ;-)

It takes a day or two to replace the blood volume and 2-3 weeks to replace the hemoglobin. If you get iron tabs. In sweden you get 20 100mg depot tablets. You might wanna consider buying a folic acid and b12 supplement as well.

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

I thought I read somewhere that a study showed that there are lingering performance impacts for up to 6 months. Maybe because of reduce training load for 1-2 weeks. I've avoided donating for a little while now, but I plan on donating after my last race this fall when I take some time off.

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TrainingBible Coaching
http://www.trainingbible.com

For me it takes a few days. I know for some people it takes longer.

Whatever you do. Do not do a hard workout such as a spin class the day of giving blood. I have never felt so sick before....

 

>Whatever you do. Do not do a hard workout such as a spin class the day of giving blood. I have never felt so sick before....


This. I was a moron and did a team time trial a few hours after giving blood. Well I started a team trial. The next thing I remember after starting is waking up from a nap along the side of the road. (Apparently I didn't crash, I just pulled off and laid down.) The other 3 guys weren't too happy with my performance, but fortunately only 3 have to finish!

Next time I'll definately wait until after my season is over. Hopefully it won't have too big of an impact on my 70.3 in June.

I found this article that does a pretty good job of quantifying the effects at least within the first week.

http://velonews.competitor.com/...articles/5265.0.html

In the best study I found on this topic, a group of researchers took 10 male "amateur competitive cyclists" and measured heart rate (HR), VO2max, power output (in watts), and ventilatory threshold (VTh) during a standardized incremental exercise study. They tested each cyclist at four time points relating to a blood donation: One week before; two hours after; two days after, and seven days after. These researchers found that at maximal efforts all performance measurements were adversely affected at all three post-donation time points. For example, at the two hours and the two days testing, VO2max was down about eight percent. Even at seven days post-donation, the average VO2max was only improved to about seven percent down from pre-donation baseline testing. It's too bad they didn't test at subsequent 1-week intervals, but it's reasonable to speculate that a complete return to baseline might take as much as three to four weeks, or even a bit longer.

I donate platelets on a semi-regular basis with no impact to my training but.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...After+Blood+Donation

I'm in the same boat. Fine for easy stuff, but I can't go hard for at least 2 weeks. The one time I did, I dug myself a hole that took a few months to recover from.

I hate to be selfish with my blood when somebody else's life might depend on it, but I have some borderline-weird blood values anyway (low HcT, low iron, low white cells). It's basically a month-long setback if I give blood during training, even if I do everything "right."

Please work this into your race report as your excuse for not setting a PR.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I'm no expert, but I think if you're doing certain types of blood doping what you've just done is just step one. I usually have very little impact a few days out. Probably wouldn't do it less than 4 weeks before an A race though.

Pink

I'm a regular dual-level donor -- donating today, as a matter of fact -- and the time line to get back to 100% is usually just shy of a week; a little less for a single, whole-blood donation. If it's been two whole weeks, you may want to get talk with a doctor/health professional and maybe get your iron levels checked.

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#cureMS

Your experience is typical. Can take a while to get back to "normal."

I wrote a short article about the issue last year. Might be useful to others who are considering blood donation.

http://www.endurancecorner.com/...ilbag_blood_donation

.

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Larry Creswell
http://www.athletesheart.org, @athletesheart

In 2005 I donated a pint. Later the same day I realized, "I have an IM in 24 days. I hope that was not a mistake." Long story short, it was. HR was 15 to 20 bpm higher on the bike than what it "should" have been. I've been borderline anemic my whole life and that didn't help. I finished, but not as quickly or strongly as I would have liked. Live and learn!

Ben

I donate double reds regularly. I have had at least 2 occasions where I donate double reds on Thursday afternoon and raced a triathlon on Saturday winning my age group in one.

Immediately afterwards the most strenuous thing I do is yoga class with some arm balances.

I don't notice any performance difference, but I don't often push the envelope.

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Swim - Bike - Run the rest is just clothing changes.