disgraceful_admin wrote:
well........ wrote:> pro runners and pro cyclist are often not very good at the other sport
To be a pro runner or cyclist, you need singular focus on the respective sport. So of course you're not going to see many people who are great at both.
As in running, there are specialties in cycling, and different specialties favor different body types. Usain Bolt and Mo Farah are built far differently. Except when climbing, the #1 enemy in cycling is air resistance. In sprinting, the physics of acceleration also comes into play. The best track sprinters will be *very* muscular as there's no climbing on the track and ability to accelerate is king; the best road sprinters are muscular but less so, as they still need to hang with the pack over the rolling hills between the start and finish - in mountain stages they ride together with the goal of making the time cut; the best time trialists still tend to be larger to generate the watts required on relatively flat courses as the cross-section you present to the wind doesn't increase as fast as the power you gain by being larger and stronger; the best climbers tend to be thin and light. Stage racers (the GC contenders in the grand tours) have to be compromises - big enough to time trial well but small enough to climb well. Triathletes have to compromise even more.
Aside from body type, bike racing is different than running racing. In the vast majority of cases, people start with pack style races (track racers might be an exception ... but track racing is relatively rare due to facility availability). In a pack style race you are going far faster for an extended time than even the fastest runners can sprint for a few meters at their peak, and you will be inches from other riders. Tactical and bike handling skills are more important and have a higher cost of mistakes. Also, bike racing requires the ability to deal with frequent variations in heart rate and effort. Attacks are a part of life, as there's a major strategic advantage of being in a small group with a gap with the main group. So you need to be able to regularly go anaerobic for brief periods even in multi-hour races. That's different than a surge in a marathon.Getting good at all of these things takes years of practice; years when the best runners are running (and vice versa). So you're not going to have great cyclists become great runners and vice versa.
This.
Emphasis on the ability to handle attacks and surges in cycling. Once you get dropped from the pack, your race is over. So if you're in a group with a few guys and they take off sprinting, you need to stick with them, even if it takes a maximum effort and you're not even halfway done with the race. This is because 5 cyclists rotating out of the draft are going to average a lot faster than 1 cyclist trying to catch up with a 50m gap.
Being able to make maximum effort sprints off an already hard pace and then recovering enough before the next one is what racing is about. Imagine that there was an absolutely massive headwind in a road 10K, and every 600m or so someone would drop a 13 second 100m. Those that didn't keep up with the ridiculous surges would not be able to slowly catch up later. It's something that doesn't really work with running since once you go all out, that's it, but you can sprint maximally for short periods dozens of times in a cycling road race.
No, you haven't realy answered the question. Anyone can learn cycling tactics.
The physiological difference is in what the feet and ankles are doing. You don't pronate much on a bike. In running, you pronate a lot. Big difference.