Blood donation

[Deleted User]

Giving blood might not affect your training in the short term but in the long term you need to be aware of your iron levels.  I run as well as doing other sports and although i'm not anemic i recently found out that my iron stores were low.  It takes about a month for your body to take iron out of it's stores and generate the new cells and if your stores are low this can be a problem as the body replaces the iron in red blood cells with zinc.  Red blood cells with zinc in them are not as efficient as those with iron, but this can mask anemia.  Women especially need to be careful as we need more iron (periods) and running itself has a negative effect on iron metabolism as running can cause a faster turnover over of gut cells responsible for iron absorption(the runs (sorry about the pun)).  Make sure you eat a sensible amount of red meat and have something with vit c in at the same time.  Symptoms of mild anaemia can be being cold and tired when you really shouldn't be.