Cranking the Biking for 30 mins. = how many miles

it equals zero in running miles. dont play that game.

look its great that you are getting a workout. i dont want to discourage your biking. no doubt it is good for your heart. but the workout is a BIKING workout, not a running one. if you must record it in a log record it separately as biking and be done with it. dont try "equate" it to some sort of running workout. that is an exercise in self delusion

I'm not worried about the miles. I was just wondering dude.

You got your answer. ZERO

NOrunner wrote:

recovery days ... My heartrate really gets up there when ... feels like some pretty nice hills

How is this recovery?

I'm not pounding my legs on the ground. So this is a good recovery workout.

It doesn't matter how many miles it "equals." Good training doesn't equal lots of miles. It is comprised of some fast miles and some slow miles or cross training. Just try to focus on how much time you spend doing whatever and keep an intelligent schedule.

If it's not easy all round (i.e. low heart rate) it's not really a recovery day.

Hard days HARD, easy days EASY.

Here's my purely subjective answer. It's based on the assumption that you tire more slowly on a bike and recover faster. Because you tire more slowly on a bike, each passing hour that you spend on the bike is probably worth less than the previous hour in terms of running equivalent.

Anyway, the first hour on a bike at an average of 250 watts is probably equivalent to running 45 minutes at 6:50 pace. And an hour of running at 6:50 pace is probably equivalent to 1 hr 20 mins on a bike at 250 watts. (At 250 watts on a flat course, you're going about 22 mph.)

I've done both of these things, and the efforts feel roughly equivalent to me in terms of aerobic output. But this is purely subjective, and the information is probably worth less than you paid for it.

Simple answer is 0.3 cycling miles per 1 running mile is pretty standard for triathletes in terms of pure workload (if you're on a road bike. Of course, many variables, but why make it complicated. 30 minutes hard is for many about 20 mph, so 10 miles of cycling or 3 miles of running. Flame away punks!

Bum, I like your post. Sounds plausible to me. The hard part is translating cycling at 20 mph into an equivalent running pace. What do you think of a 6:50 running pace for 45 mins as equivalent to cycling at 20 mph for 60 mins? (Assuming relatively flat courses.)

Depends how easy a 6:50 is for you, and how hard 20 miles is for you.

There's no easy translation, so go by percieved effort. If you are feeling tempo-level discomfort at 20 mph on a road bike, and ride 30 minutes, the workload is similar to a 3 mile tempo. 2 hours at 15 mph easy riding is similar to a 9 mile easy run. Equivilent? Probably not. Similar? Yep.

To me, the two efforts are roughly the same. I used to run, but now I bike. I've been cycling consistently for several years and am probably about as good at cycling as I was at running. My fitness level is about the same as it was then.

I think running at 6:50 pace for 45 mins is equivalent to cycling at 22 mph for one hour. And running at 6:50 pace for one hour is roughly equivalent to cycling at 22 mph for one hour and 20 mins. But this equation changes as you add more time, since the rate of fatigue is much faster running than it is on a bike.

I'm no authority on this. I'm just reporting what I consider to be equivalent for the two activities at my particular level, which is apparently close to the lead poster's level. I would imagine that cycling at 250 watts is roughly equivalent to 22 mph on a relatively flat course on a good road bike.

And by the way, these would be tempo-level efforts for me.

Your 0.3 mile equivalent for each mile biked fits my stated running equivalent with almost scientific precision. If you run for one hour at 6:50 pace, you cover 8.78 miles. If you cycle for 1 hr 20 mins at 22 mph, you cover 29.26 miles. Multiply 29.26 by 0.3 and you get 8.778.

I'd love to take credit for it. Hell, I will take credit for it. It was all my idea. YEAH!!!!!

So to answer NOrunner, 45 mins of cycling at an average of 250 watts is equivalent to 4.95 miles of running at 6:50 pace. But as others have already pointed out, cycling training does not have the same effect as the equivalent running.

(I calculated this by assuming that stationary cycling at 250 watts is equivalent to outdoor cycling at 22 mph. Multiply 22 by .75 and you get 16.5 miles. Multiply that by 0.3 and you get 4.95 miles.)

By the way, NOrunner, I would suggest doing your stationary bike sessions at 80-85 RPMs rather 100 RPMs. The basic training principles that apply to running also apply to biking. Most of your endurance training should be at a pace where it's easy to answer a brief question but uncomfortable to tell a story.

It's true that a lot of spin classes vary the RPMs, but that's mostly to cater to the masses, who would get bored cycling at a steady rate of 80-85 RPMs. But that cadence is the most efficient for biking. If you throw in bursts of 100 RPMs, you're probably just wasting your energy.

You got your answer. ZERO

I do a minimum of 40 minutes on my exercise bike after my main workout everyday. It improves my leg strength and overall aerobic conditioning. On a medium setting I'll average 15+ mph with a heart rate getting up to the high 150s.

I had taken 7 years off from running and the bike was great in helping me last year get back into it. I do not care what the run-to-bike conversion is. Mileage and intensity need to be mixed in various forms to produce optimum results. Too many people get caught up in training to run when the focus needs to be on training to race.

Bottom line is the bike works great for me and helps get me to the start line ready to race.

In my experience, the two don't cross translate. If you're fat and out of shape, bicycling will help you become a better runner and vice-versa, but once you're in shape, the only way to get better at running is to run and the only way to get better at bicycling is to bicycle. A bike ride does not translate to running and running does not translate to a bike ride. That is just my opinion, however if someone were to do a scientific study on this matter, I'm pretty sure the results would strongly agree with my opinion. Now you could go with calorie expenditures and say so many miles onthe bike at such a percent is equal to a run of this distance at such a percent, but really they aren't equal because your heart will pump significantly slower on the bike, therefore you would have to do many more miles on the bike to burn the same amount of calories, however, biking hard will not make you a significantly faster runner, only running fast will do that.