If you took any sub 2:10 marathoner and put them in a road bike race, would they be semi competitive..?

On the flip side I took a good friend for a 4 mile run after he returned from the World Championship u23 road race......he barely made it 3 miles at 7 minute pace before we walked home laughing.

Just 5 days earlier he raced 5 hours with the best riders in the world. I wouldn’t dream of hanging with him on a bike he is world class.......but cycling isn’t running and running isn't cycling.

My experience has shown that you can make a runner a cyclist eaiser than a cyclist a runner. If your a great runner you probably have a low bmi and high Vo2. If you spend a few years riding you will eventually be pretty decent. If you get a great coach and ride in a ton of races you’ll figure out the handling and tactics, but racing as a european pro just like running 2:10 is probably a dream! I have done niether and only have 1 friend who actually pulled it off cycling and I dont know anyone who runs 2:10 so I have no clue.

No

The question is will they be semi-competitive and the answer is YES.

We are talking about semi-competitive. Of course a 2:10 marathoner could gain a few pounds of muscle and kick some ass. Again look at the canadian guy racing in the pro-tour.

I know a most cyclists think of themselves as super elite but the average american Cat 1-2 is a mediorce athlete. They were probably mid-pack cross country runners in high school. A 2:10 marathoner is a pretty darn elite/pro world class athelte. There are hundreds if not thousands of cat 1-2 riders on a given year. 2:10 marathon is much harder. Cat1-2 is probably closer to running 2:40 in a marathon. I was a cat 1 and running 2:10 pace for 2-4 miles is almost impossible... racing for 4 hours is casual compared to a 5 minute mile.

Now if we are talking pro-tour then we are talking about a different level.

I think mid-distance folks are better suited for cycling than elite marathoners. You need super quads, not the super-skinny legs of a marathoner. Obviously speed skaters translate far better than distance runners.

2:12 guy answer wrote:

Ask Keith Brantley about his triathlon attempt.

OK, he's not a 2:10 marathoner either, or a road biker for that matter, but Tim Hacker from that era sometimes jumps into low key fat bike races in Madison and is typically at or near the front. Tim is an old dude who is not exactly at race weight and obviously just out there having fun, but he dispatches a lot of young guys with relative ease. I suspect he could have done some damage on the bike if he had gone after it seriously in his 20s or 30s. No fat bike races back then!

Mr Millenial wrote:

They're totally different sports - obviously someone who is talented at one can become good at the other with years of training, but it's not a given....

Given the abnormal gifts a 2:10 marathoner has, they'd do well in cycling if they can learn to ride a bike, quickly.

And that guy took a decade to do so.

The question didn't add a qualifier of "if they trained for a couple of years".

So your answer to the question as it stands is flat-out incorrect.

I'm still saying yes very quickly.

A 2:30 marathoner who has some muscle might actually be better even faster.

Woods is an excellent example of what I was talking about - he switched and became a competitive pro cyclist EVENTUALLY, after years of specific training.

If you put a young Woods in 4:00 mile shape on the start line of a Pro Tour road race, he'd be dropped very very quickly.

bikemiles wrote:

If you took any sub 2:10 marathoner and put them in a road bike race, would they be semi competitive..?

They would win a mountain top time trial (which is a pure measure of fitness esssentially) in something like the tour de France by a few minutes as running is so much more competitive than cycling so I am pretty sure that a top level runner is a considerably more high level endurance athlete than a top level cyclist.

However with no specific cycling training they could not do any sort of desecent descending in a mountain stage they would struggle badly in that sort of race. Similarly in flat stages and time trials they would had have all sorts of difficulty as they would have problems riding in a peleton and generating the power to turn a big gear on the flats.

running is more competitive wrote:

bikemiles wrote:

If you took any sub 2:10 marathoner and put them in a road bike race, would they be semi competitive..?

They would win a mountain top time trial (which is a pure measure of fitness esssentially) in something like the tour de France by a few minutes as running is so much more competitive than cycling so I am pretty sure that a top level runner is a considerably more high level endurance athlete than a top level cyclist.

However with no specific cycling training they could not do any sort of desecent descending in a mountain stage they would struggle badly in that sort of race. Similarly in flat stages and time trials they would had have all sorts of difficulty as they would have problems riding in a peleton and generating the power to turn a big gear on the flats.

LMAO. This is up there for stupidest sh1t I've ever read. It's like saying you could take somebody from another sport, drop them in running, and they'd run 24:20 for 10k. Nobody is going 2' faster than top level uphill for cycling over a 20'-40' course because of the implications. Winners are usually doing 6-6.5 w/kg for such an event. Going that fast would be 7+ w/kg, which is unheard of territory even in the doping era.

Moreover, runners wouldn't have the developed musculature and more importantly ability to deliver oxygen to that musculature effectively. They would need a year or three of cycling to even begin to reach a high level, and even then it's no guarantee they would be that great. Woods is a good example tbh, he was a pretty darn good miler, and he is a pretty good punchy climber cyclist on those 3'-8' type climbs. Probably top 5, definitely top 10 in the world. Similar place to where he might have been which his running career. Up longer climbs he is strong, but nothing special, probably like a low to mid 27' 10k would be. Ended up about as good in cycling as he was likely to be in running, perhaps and edge to cycling. Clearly not...lolol switched to WT cycling and dominated this sh1t easy level

Yes I think I wrote:

I'm still saying yes very quickly.

A 2:30 marathoner who has some muscle might actually be better even faster.

At what level? If you are talking about entry level racing then yes, on the start line of a cat 5 bike race, that guy would likely be in the top 3 or better in terms of fitness. Similar for cat 4. We've seen this with Sage, he has hopped on his bike and done some all out hills a couple years ago. His time were nowhere near the elite cyclists, but were still quite good, I'd say respectable Cat1/2 level. So right in the middle of the top amateurs (just under 30' on Flagstaff, mid to high 5' on NCAR, or about 4.5 w/kg for 30' and 5.2-5.5 or so w/kg for 5').

Sage might have an initial starting advantage though with his mountain running being advantageous for quad muscle development.

That said, if Sage showed up on the startline of a Cat4/5 bike race, that wasn't a pure hillclimb, he would get murdered. In the wrong race, he would flat out be in the wrong spot at the wrong time, miss a key split, and be dropped. In a calmer race he'd finish midpack without ever being in contention. Bike racing has all kinds of tactics and skills you need to have to be effective. You have to know when to jump on the gas, when to ease off, how to corner with the bunch, when are the times to put pressure on or ease off, how to surf wheels efficiently, when to move up, etc. Sage would have better fitness than most of the 4/5 guys, but he'd wouldn't be efficient on his bike and would waste a ton of energy being in the wrong places at the wrong times.

If Sage was in a Cat2 race, likely his current fitness level, he'd be promptly dropped. The lack of race skills would be too much in that race, as would the duration and especially the repetition of the really hard effort over and over again. Most guys in Cat2 can probably rip out 6w/kg or close for 5'...not many can do it 4-10 times over the course of a 3 hour bike race and then deliver a strong sprint or uphill kick. That's also what you saw with Woods. He had great one off climbs or intervals almost from the start...but still was not an immediate factor at domestic pro levels. Why? His tactics/race skills/positioning sucked, and he didn't have staying power to repeat and repeat these hard effort.

The question doesn't seem to imply that, but if the question is if a 2:10 guy had a year or two could he be an effective bike racer...the answer is yes. If focused, I would suspect well over 95% of 2:10 guys could become respectable Cat1 racers, or better, given 2-3 years to develop bike racing skills.

I remember a Ryan Hall blog post from when he was near his prime. A week or two after a successful marathon, he took his his road bike up one of the popular climbs near his home. I don’t remember any of the details, and I can’t find the post, but he was expecting to be in the same neighborhood as most of the serious amateurs on that climb, and he was not really even close. Maybe someone with better googling skills can find a link, but it seemed like a pretty definitive “no” to this question.