Will Running Help My Cycling

[conchenta]

Will introducing some running into my training programme help my cycling fitness too?

 

[180mmCrank]

Old wisdom says no. Real answer is it depends. Why are you considering it?

 

[nightfend]

No, it won't help your cycling, but it will improve your over fitness and strengthen muscles, tendon and bones that would normally atrophy in cycling.

 

[David Suro]

It depends.

Post a copy of your training program and goals to get some better advice.

Running is good for reducing body weight, improving core body strength, and improving mental toughness. Running is not good for improving pedaling efficiency or increasing cadence.

Some advantages of running are that it can be done at night with relative safety and is an easy form of cardio exercise for people who travel and cannot justify taking a bike with them on trips.

 

[egtalbot]

I'd lean "no"

I'm a runner primarily, only started cycling the past three years (I did race bikes 1 year as a junior before I started running).

It's hard for me to see how running could help cycling much unless you have problems getting out on the bike but you are able to run instead. Otherwise, if you want to get faster on the bike, focus on more riding, better technique, etc. I suspect that some cyclists who don't do a lot of steady state work might find that running helps them, but doing more steady state cycling should accomplish the same thing.

Now, one thing about running training is that on average, elite runners spend far less time training than elite cyclists. Two hours a day has been enough to win plenty of Olympic marathon medals. For that reason, runners train at higher average heart rates than cyclists - you can have a higher heart rate if you only have to keep it up for 2 hours instead of 4 or 5. But it seems to me that unless somehow the added running can be done at a higher heart rate than you could do if you added more cycling instead, the running wouldn't make sense.

I should note that while it seems like adding running won't help cycling much, adding cycling might help a runner. Runners are constantly on the edge of getting injured, and adding a few hours a week of exercise at say 75-80% heart rate without increasing injury risk might be a good thing. My own training is inconsistent enough at this point in my life that I can draw no conclusions about whether cycling has helped my running. I'm far slower than I used to be, but cycling isn't the reason!

One final note - running is absolutely horrible training for racing criteriums and doing races with major pace changes unrelated to terrain. This I have learned the hard way

 

[usedtobefast]

yes it will, is the simple answer. cycling does require certain specific things, but running does augment your training. not more than 1 day a week really, if you want to be a serious bike racer. keeps you from getting stale too.

 

[kiwirider]

Personal experience says yes it does - although initially the combination of the different muscles and the impact/weight bearing nature of running is counter productive. This goes after a few weeks at the most - sooner if you stretch more - as your legs adapt to the combination of the two forms of exercise.

A few years ago I did a season of duathlon racing - which by definition involves both running and cycling during the racing season. I know that the biking in this is different to bike racing, but I was still doing a few bike races over this time and it seemed to be OK. During this time, from memory, I averaged about 350km riding and about 30-50km running per week - the lower running reflecting that I come from a biking rather than running background.

More recently, I spent the early part of this season doing (pretty serious/gnarly) trail running a couple of times a week - having come off a winter of XC skiing - and found that the impact on my cardio vascular performance was huge. It also helped me build a certain toughness into the legs - hard to describe other than to say it was like a fast track to some race fitness. And like David Suro says, it helps core strength well and truly.

For me as well, I find that my body responds to throwing in one or two cross training sessions throughout the season - which are running and yoga.

I also put in about six solid weeks of running every day in mid summer - prep-ing for the cross season. It wasn't anything long - only around the 20min/5km mark - and was a combination of road and off-road/city park running. This gave me another leap on in general cycling fitness - again, to me it feels like that "toughening up the legs" thing ... Didn't seem to adversely affect my riding - but it did mean that I had to be more particular about stretching every day to ensure that I stayed flexible.

I'm sure that the benefits go both ways, as I know that my running speed improved out of sight for the amount of time that I spent running - and I've had one of the best summers on the bike for ages.

I know that there will be a number of other posters who will disagree - after all, standard logic in the cycling community is that you can't run and that it'll stuff you up completely. As I say, my experience is that this old school position is crap for anyone other than a really serious rider putting in major k's per week. But under those circumstances, your muscles will have become so specialised that anything other than biking is going to be counterproductive.

As with anything though, it depends on the person concerned - so try it out for yourself, see what works for you. Most of all - have fun with whatever your training is!

 

[Race Radio]

it really depends what your goals are.

Running is a great off season activity. An excellent way to keep fit if you need to travel.

If your goal is to race then running during racing season is not good. It kills your power and makes you stiff.

 

[forty four]

no not for most running is more or less pure endurance with little need for muscle strength. a better off season choice would be speed skating or cross country skiing those use a bit more of the cycling muscles while obviously supporting endurance as well. look at elite runners they make cyclists look like body builders no thanks.

 

[usedtobefast]

it really depends what your goals are.

Running is a great off season activity. An excellent way to keep fit if you need to travel.

If your goal is to race then running during racing season is not good. It kills your power and makes you stiff.

no it does not.based on my results.

 

[ihavenolimbs]

Yep, sort of...

I've thought about this myself and the following is a summary of what I've found:

A paper on PubMed explored the effects of cross-training in triathlon and in summary:
- Running helped cycling a bit
- Cycling helped running a bit
- Swimming didn't improve the other two and the other two didn't improve swimming

From other articles it seems that the more trained you are in cycling the smaller the benefit you get from running (or any other cross-training).

If you train 5 hours a week on the bike, running a couple of hours will help your cycling but cycling for those couple of extra hours will help more. I'd only add running if, for some reason, I really couldn't add more cycling.

If you are an elite cyclist, and therefore train heavily, then you'd probably be at a disadvantage by running as well. This could be because:
1/ Adding running could lead to overtraining.
2/ Reducing the quantity of cycling to allow for running will reduce your cycle-specific training, hence you'll be slower.

Even a triathlete that excels at cycling (like Normann Stadler, who sets bike-leg records, and I have a book which contains his test results from a few years back) doesn't put out power numbers close to top cyclists.

 

[runninboy]

it really depends what your goals are.

Running is a great off season activity. An excellent way to keep fit if you need to travel.

If your goal is to race then running during racing season is not good. It kills your power and makes you stiff.

I also disagree, based on personal results.
But it has to be quality running workouts, not just jogging.
When i am running easy i will have a heartrate avg of between 140-155 for a good 45 minute cross country run.
When i am doing quality runs that bumps up to 175 avg for 40 minutes with a few sprints that get close to 200bpm
Hard to get that kind of workout on a road bike for that kind of duration in my experience. to get my heartrate that high consistently and stay there i tend to blow up

 

[cromagnon]

I fail to see how this:

I also disagree, based on personal results.
But it has to be quality running workouts, not just jogging.
When i am running easy i will have a heartrate avg of between 140-155 for a good 45 minute cross country run.
When i am doing quality runs that bumps up to 175 avg for 40 minutes with a few sprints that get close to 200bpm
Hard to get that kind of workout on a road bike for that kind of duration in my experience. to get my heartrate that high consistently and stay there i tend to blow up

Can be a rebuttal of this:

If your goal is to race then running during racing season is not good. It kills your power and makes you stiff.

The only possible objection to the text in italics above is to prove that running does adversely affect your cycling power output. All you said was your heart rate goes higher during running.

(I just want to add this is not meant as a flame I am also interested in doing some running in the future).

 

[python]

i am a sub three h marathon runner and a weekend century rider. methinks the answer is in separating common things from non common.

Common:
i. cardio stress
ii..breathing lung respiration stress.

Noncommon:
i. weight support. in running you carry your own weight. in cycling you mostly sit.
ii. different muscle stress. because different groups are involved in moving you forward and keeping upright.
iii. running is a lot of pounding. more faster running (the stuff competitive runners do) produces exponentially more pounding. cycling at any speed=no pounding.

the more competitive you get the less benefit you get.

if you want to be a piano virtuoso you need to play piano... a lot.

not that you can’t play several instruments and have fun

 

[Rock7586]

Running is a great way to help keep the pounds off. I found that when I did a solid running program during the off season. The high intensity efforts riding gave me no trouble and I went on to have a great season.

In fact I am starting my running program once again.

Start out slowly and keep your heart rate under control. The lower the better for the first few weeks. Make longer durations the goal. Once you can run for 45 - 60 minutes at a time. Then it may be time in increase the intensity. Keep in mind and take notice of your recovery time and how you feel the next couple of days. Good for and efficiency is very important.

 

[Race Radio]

I also disagree, based on personal results.
But it has to be quality running workouts, not just jogging.
When i am running easy i will have a heartrate avg of between 140-155 for a good 45 minute cross country run.
When i am doing quality runs that bumps up to 175 avg for 40 minutes with a few sprints that get close to 200bpm
Hard to get that kind of workout on a road bike for that kind of duration in my experience. to get my heartrate that high consistently and stay there i tend to blow up

I raced D1 cross country here in the US and raced my bike in Europe. I traded off an on between the two sports for 12 years and raced Tri's full time for a year. In my experience running significantly hurt my power output on the bike. It hurt my ability to TT and short burst power. Of course if you are training for the occasional century or local 10K it may be not as noticeable.

 

[egtalbot]

I'll add one more observation based on personal experience. I ran and racewalked for almost 20 years. When I did, one of my biggest strengths was the ability to change speeds, either during a race or at the end for the kick. That meant I was pretty good at moderate hills as well, not so great at really long, 20 minute plus hills.

Three years ago I started cycling some and have done a bit of both over the time since then. Mostly I've done TT's, with a handful of mass start races as well. And the single thing I'm worst at is what I was good at running, which is changing speeds. I noticed this the first year and started altering my training to do a lot of speed changes. It has made very little difference in my ability to hang in a crit where the speed changes a lot. What I am best at in cycling is TT's and long steady grades (which I only get in the summer when I leave Florida) - the opposite of running.

I have puzzled over the differences. Obviously I could focus more on group rides and I have begun doing that. But I'm trying to figure out what is so different. My thought is that the change in speed is greater in cycling. Going from 22mph around a turn to 27mph 6 seconds later is different than speeding up by 20 seconds a mile on a run. But the main thing is sort of a "feel" thing - when I speed up running even to near all out, it just feels smoother than on the bike. So all in all it could be simply a matter of over 20 years running and relatively little time on the bike - and I don't do big miles on the bike by any stretch.

No idea how much of what I've noticed is due to running training and how much is due to my personal physiology and background. But if I were 100% focused on cycling (approaching age 40 I'm now slow at both running and cycling so I'm gonna have fun with both of 'em) , I can't see that I'd want to run unless I was already getting in 800K a week and felt my body needed the different stresses.

 

[runninboy]

I fail to see how this:



Can be a rebuttal of this:

If your goal is to race then running during racing season is not good. It kills your power and makes you stiff.

The only possible objection to the text in italics above is to prove that running does adversely affect your cycling power output. All you said was your heart rate goes higher during running.

(I just want to add this is not meant as a flame I am also interested in doing some running in the future).

guess what? i did not want to give a huge explanation as to why in my personal exp the statement was wrong. So i shortened it to the fact that jogging is not the same as quality running(high heartrate)
btw another possible objection is that running makes you stiff which in my exp again it does not

 

[craig1985]

I've thought about this myself and the following is a summary of what I've found:

A paper on PubMed explored the effects of cross-training in triathlon and in summary:
- Running helped cycling a bit
- Cycling helped running a bit
- Swimming didn't improve the other two and the other two didn't improve swimming

From other articles it seems that the more trained you are in cycling the smaller the benefit you get from running (or any other cross-training).

If you train 5 hours a week on the bike, running a couple of hours will help your cycling but cycling for those couple of extra hours will help more. I'd only add running if, for some reason, I really couldn't add more cycling.

If you are an elite cyclist, and therefore train heavily, then you'd probably be at a disadvantage by running as well. This could be because:
1/ Adding running could lead to overtraining.
2/ Reducing the quantity of cycling to allow for running will reduce your cycle-specific training, hence you'll be slower.

Even a triathlete that excels at cycling (like Normann Stadler, who sets bike-leg records, and I have a book which contains his test results from a few years back) doesn't put out power numbers close to top cyclists.

I find it a good recovery exercise, and if I can't ride (running is a no-no for me, and our climate here means we don't really have an off-season), then swimming allows me to keep busy and exercising.

 

[Rock7586]

I have been running for about 5 weeks nice and easy. And just recently feel like I have gotten those base miles out of the way, and running for a distance of up to an hour at a time is no longer a problem. I did a crit recently and noticed that my Max HR has gone up 10 bpm (Sunday 10/10). As well as a 3 hour long road ride with 20 - 30 min near threshold (past sunday 10/17). Almost always at 186 for the heavy/labored breathing. This time I had to get pushed past 194 before I got anywhere near heavy/labored breathing.

 

[Tapeworm]

I have been running for about 5 weeks nice and easy. And just recently feel like I have gotten those base miles out of the way, and running for a distance of up to an hour at a time is no longer a problem. I did a crit recently and noticed that my Max HR has gone up 10 bpm (Sunday 10/10). As well as a 3 hour long road ride with 20 - 30 min near threshold (past sunday 10/17). Almost always at 186 for the heavy/labored breathing. This time I had to get pushed past 194 before I got anywhere near heavy/labored breathing.

But was your power any higher or lower?

 

[fatandfast]

But was your power any higher or lower?

I spent a good portion of the weekend drinking beer and laughing my **** off listening to new cyclocross stories. Guys who are ok on the road 2s and 3s are giving cyclocross racing a try and they have all found that running is the thing they just can't do. Upper body power is also lacking. Everybody agrees that running is helping them with this new pursuit. Even if you don't run you should cross train because your range of motion on a bike puts you at risk for lots of injuries if you try and snowshoe,ski or snowboard this winter.

 

[Tapeworm]

I spent a good portion of the weekend drinking beer and laughing my **** off listening to new cyclocross stories. Guys who are ok on the road 2s and 3s are giving cyclocross racing a try and they have all found that running is the thing they just can't do. Upper body power is also lacking. Everybody agrees that running is helping them with this new pursuit. Even if you don't run you should cross train because your range of motion on a bike puts you at risk for lots of injuries if you try and snowshoe,ski or snowboard this winter.

This I do not argue, however the question remains. Rock7586 stated that their HR was up 10bpm or so before the same level of RPE kicked in.

BUT, was there actually any extra power there, or just a higher HR for the same, less or more power output? An important difference.

 

[egtalbot]

I too would be interested in knowing if the power has changed. But I'll say that at first glance, I suspect the increased max HR mostly has to do with the fact that running training is generally more of a steady state effort than cycling. That causes different physiological adaptations.

I have the opposite problem - coming from a running background, steady state is all I can do.

 

[Biciclette Bianchi]

I have the opposite problem - coming from a running background, steady state is all I can do.

Same here... I have really started working anaerobic endurance and strength, of late. However, power/leg strength is still what limits my performance (I can't get my HR above the mid 170's on the bike, as my cardiovascular fitness is as good as my strength is bad).


Dave