I’ve lost all respect for cyclists.

Then you're a bad cyclist, and a poor runner. a 15 mile hard bike ride is equivalent to 4-mile tempo.

Distance covered in an hour is a terrible way to compare the difficulty of the two activities. By your logic, driving a car for an hour is tougher than running for an hour. A better way is to compare calories burned. According to estimates by the American College of Sports Medicine. running burns 566 to 839 calories an hour, while cycling at a vigorous pace burns 498 to 738 calories an hour. Running is no where near "twice as hard" as biking given similar effort levels.

As for the OP, if he/she isn't a regular biker I give him/her credit for being able to tolerate a bike seat long enough to cover 70 miles.

Disregard all of my post above with the exception of the last sentence. Woke up sick and miserable and my brain isn't working.

More evidence why a modify/delete capability needs to be added to this board.

you are either running way too hard or cycling way too easy.

in general cycling produces a lower heart rate at similar efforts largely because it is lower impact, but this is balanced with a higher volume. With that being said my highest heart rate readings have all come from bike races and KOM attempts.

Pics or shens.

Would love to see you balancing on a bike while eating said pizza. The coordination required.

I like your post because it mentions pizza, but not sure if I get the idea. Do you imply that running is also not a sport? I can totally have pizza on an easy run, like hanging out out with some recreational-runner friend through her 4-something hour marathon – in fact, I've done just that, wasn't a whole pizza though, just a slice. It's not unusual to find cinnamon buns and donuts and stuff like that at aid stations on trail races and ultras, maybe pizza too – no firsthand knowledge, but I think I've seen pics of people gulping pizzas while changing shoes at the same time on some longer distances.

Now biking, I would have to go super slow to eat a pizza otherwise I would hit a car or a tree root or a passerby. Less chance of puking right away, I give you that, but overall about the same difficulty imo.

So both running and cycling are not sports I guess?

Cycling is at least 3:1 to running. 3miles cycle=1 mile run… they are not perfect crosstraining of each other, thats just strain on your body about 3:1.

And theres not the same sheer impact injury risk. In cycling if you over do a season, you will just go flat… in running you will get injured and also flat… the cycling injuries other than crashes are really long term stuff…

Well developed cyclists go pretty hard… In crit races that’s a pretty long time of going that hard.

NFL players can eat a whole pizza during the game. Most of their time is spent on the sidelines, even if you are a major player. Most have quite a bit of fat on them too

Don't go by miles. I have found that I have to do about double the time on a bike to get the same effect as a run. So, a 4 mile easy run for me takes about a half hour. On the bike, I need to ride a decent clip for an hour. I cover about 18 miles in that hour on the bike, so the mile to mile ratio is more like 4.5:1. 5:1 is probably more accurate. 3:1 is way too low.

First of all, big thumbs up to the OP for a great shtpost! Excellent reactions.

As for the ratios, on a flat road with no wind an equivalently fit cyclist:runner ratio is going to be right around 6.85:1 on a road bike with a cda around .35ish

70 mile bike ride similar to a 10 mile run when equivalently adapted to both.

Marathon is going to be similar to doing a one day classic in terms of length; 26.2 x 6.85 = 180 miles

bonking on a bike is much worse than bonking on a run, especially if you’re far from home and there’s hills involved. Add heat, even worse.

as a former runner who converted to cycling ... this response 10237832713291%

Any sport where you can drink 4 beers while doing the activity is not a sport ;-)

I was a runner for many years, and a cyclist now for 12 years. Running was harder in the sense of having to carry your body weight. However, cycling taught me to push harder than I ever did during running, and as a runner, I ended up in the hospital twice at the end of a 30K and a Half Marathon.

Like you said, the ratio is dependent on you ability on a bike. A well trained cyclist will find a 70 mile ride no more difficult than a well-trained runner running 10 miles. But a runner not used to cycling will feel like he did an ultra afterwards if they biked 70 miles with no training.

"Hicham El Guerrouj could eat a candy bar and run 63 seconds." He could probably eat a whole pizza while running 75 seconds per lap, especially on a treadmill.

I could take you on a rugged singletrack adventure that would quite literally (1) kill you and (2) redefine the concept of a powerful, endurance monster athlete for you.

"I've lost all respect for cyclists" is what I would say if I had any respect for them in the first place.

You must have some natural ability for cycling. My longest cycle ever was 45 miles, and it just about killed me. I do live in a hilly area, so there's no way to avoid significant elevation gain, but I think I'd find even 70 dead flat miles much, much harder to running 7 miles. This is in large part because I have natural running ability, and I do not have natural cycling ability. In Strava, for example, I am almost always near the top for running segments percent-wide, whereas when I go out for a cycle, I am almost always in the bottom 50% for segments, often in the bottom 25%. You may be the opposite. Cycling is a great sport. If 70 miles is easy for you, you might enjoy pursuing it. You can see so much going out for long rides.