Who is the better Athlete: A world class marathon runner or a WC biker?

(I race more in cycling than in running) The thing that runners usually don´t realize about road cycling is that, especially in races with a lot of participants, multiple packs form throughout the race. How? Attacking. And how do you keep up with a pack? Riding ALL OUT for 30-60 seconds or more. You might have to do maximal efforts 10-15 times in a race to finish in the first, second, or fifth pack and so on. It´s just grueling. Imagine doing that for 4 hours and then have a sprint finish, or a long uphill finish. The one-day World Championships race is over 6 hours long every year.

Even the climbers first have to attack and go very hard and then settle into a pace they can hold for an hour to get up a mountain. In long stage races there are days when they go mostly easy, too.

Interesting question, but I think trying to answer it is pointless. The best ‘athletes’ from any country are not cycling or running, they are playing team sports as this is where the fame and money is.

Top athletes are in:

Football (soccer) - most countries

Ice hockey - Canada, northern US and parts of Europe

NBA/NFL, maybe MLB - USA

Baseball - some Latin American countries, Japan and Korea

Cricket - India

China - not sure

I think we can agree that cyclists train more than runner (hours per day) but training that much would be counterproductive for a runner. More people have access to running than cycling which should make it more competitive. How about triathletes and swimmers, where do they fit in?

To answer this somewhat abstractly, I'd say the cyclist, for the same reason that I'd bet on a cross country skier over a runner. While the caloric expenditure of running is a bit higher, and we may assume the cardiovascular training effect correspondingly higher, the amount of load a human can handle in a given week is much less with running. No one runs 400km a week, with like 10-20% quality, without injury. But it is quite possible to do the equivalent in skiing or cycling. I'd put my money on a triathlete, for maximum amount of training before injury sets in, but the problem becomes incommensurability in the measurement of the result.

Yeah the marathon runner runs 3 a year? A total of 78 miles ~

The cyclist rides 120 - 160 miles a race, and in the TDF does that 22 straight days. And that is just 1 race. 1 MF race

Just f++k off you numbskull

Well, athletes can get fit in all endurance sports. As training is specific for each of these sports, it logically produces best results for it. What is of intetest is how sports specific fitness trasfers over to a different sport. From my personal experience (2:31 marathoner, love to cycle as well) the progression from weakest sports to strongest is the following:

4.swimmers: basically suck at everything except swimming.

3. Cyclists. Suck at running. Swim ok with proper training

2. Runners. Transfer just fine to cycling worse to swimming. I can beat most my buddies on thier bike, that I borrow from them :) , and they are considered regional class. I'm a hobbyjogger.

1. Cross country skiers. These are mean. Come spring they fkkkk us Runners in halfs and marathons with a little training. And I do train in winter just as seriously as in summer.

So Runners are up top, but not top in terms of general endurance fitness. That is, if we compare level to level athletes.

Also Gwen's display in marathon comes to mind.

Then there was that baltic runner turned cyclist who did well.

Can't remember a single swimmer going up this ladder.

Also try to run a summer workout with xc skiers. You'll rethink your fitness)

The question was which is the better athlete, not which event last longer, requires more training or needs more skill.

I think the talent pool argument holds most weight here. Virtually everyone in the world runs at some point in their life, and there are probably very few people who have the talent to be a world class marathoner who go through life completely unaware of this latent talent. In cycling however, due to cultural and economic reasons, there is no doubt that a much smaller percentage of potential participants are exposed to the sport, let alone, get to encounter the sort of structured, competitive environment that nurtures European and American cyclists.

A relatively small country like the UK can achieve disproportionate success in the event through the sponsorship of athletes and heavy financial investment in world-class cutting edge facilities. A very large majority of the world's population will never have access to this level of support and cultural encouragement and so their athletes will be at a substantial disadvantage, if they even get a chance to compete at all.

I don't want this to slip into a race debate, but cycling, like rowing and many other sports which rely on equipment and technology, are still heavily dominated by white Europeans. Without the equal competitive participation of the majority of the world's athletes, to me cycling looks to be at the athletic level of middle and long distance running in the 1940's and 50's before the mass influx from Africa and the rest of the world started to rapidly raise the level of talent necessary to excel.

As for the argument that Cycling attracts better athletes because there is more money at the top level, well that doesn't really make sense. No matter how much money a top cyclist can earn, it isn't going to make the sport any more accessible to athletes from impoverished third world countries than will multi-million pound prizes make Formula One motor racing accessible to me. The relative riches of - and instant access to - marathon running however, means that you can be pretty sure that the exploits of Eliud Kipchoge, for example, are much closer to the limits of human achievement in his sport than is the case of his cycling equivalents in theirs.

Hobbyjogger High wrote:

Can't remember a single swimmer going up this ladder.

Yuki Sato.

Easy to answer. Per Lance Armstrong himself, when he ran his first marathon (NYC) he said that the training and race per se, was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Case closed.

The Land of Rising Sun wrote:

Hobbyjogger High wrote:

Can't remember a single swimmer going up this ladder.

Yuki Sato.

Good point IF he was a competetive swimmer. I only see running data on him. This, among other stuff, may mean that he just started with a wrong sport. Not that he was good at his level in swimming and than crushed running.

sillyman wrote:

The cyclist rides 120 - 160 miles a race, and in the TDF does that 22 straight days. And that is just 1 race. 1 MF race

Just f++k off you numbskull

... They want their 120 mile TdF stages back.

Utter Moran.

lotsofothersports wrote:

I actually think cyclists, swimmers, triathletes, canoeists, kayakers, rowers, gymnasts, fencers , cross country skiers, biathletes, speed skaters etc. work a lot harder, work a lot more and need to hurt lot more than runners do...

You missed out darts players from your list. A top pro covers further than a marathon walking from the oche to the board and back. Plus it is very tiring on the arm. And its like back to back beer miles because you have to drink at least a gallon of warm English beer at the same time.

Talent Pools wrote:

I don't want this to slip into a race debate, but cycling, like rowing and many other sports which rely on equipment and technology, are still heavily dominated by white Europeans.

The most dominant stage-racing cyclist of his generation, and the most famous currently racing (4 tour de france wins) is a Kenyan.

donyiyo wrote:

Easy to answer. Per Lance Armstrong himself, when he ran his first marathon (NYC) he said that the training and race per se, was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Case closed.

Hey chin ups are hard- you know why? I don't have the arms for it.

A retired LA, who has a talent for cycling calling running hard is like a cow saying its hard to fly

lotsofothersports wrote:I actually think cyclists, swimmers, triathletes, canoeists, kayakers, rowers, gymnasts, fencers , cross country skiers, biathletes, speed skaters etc. work a lot harder, work a lot more and need to hurt lot more than runners do...

I call it BS. I was training in swimming and at point was doing triathlon but I have never endured that crazy pains as during running races.

Cycling is relatively much more easier, though the legs might hurt and become weak during long hard rides, the overall pain you feel just doesn't seem that strong as you are not going close to your vo2max or even anaerobic threshold for long times as it happens a lot in running events. If there were shorter cycling distances like 10-15 min sprints it might be for a different picture, but honestly riding in a peleton where you barely have any wind resistance for most of the time is a breeze.

Swimming is all about flow and rhythm, and though you certainly can accumulate A LOT of lactate and have a miserable last meters of the race it still is not quite the same pain as you experience during 400 or 800 meter runs. At least when I raced 100 and 200 meter distances I obviously was dead afterwards but it still wasn't that bad as 800 meter run.

I’ve done a lot of both.

Running is harder overall but there’s nothing in running that compares to the effort of a big climb in cycling.

Swimming is entirely different from both. It’s all technique, fitness doesn’t matter that much.

gargon fibre wrote:

Actually now most elite runners are relying on carbon fiber so this is no longer true as of 2017. It is just a lot cheaper than 30K. $250 carbon fibre springs.

This is a ridiculous argument. A talented runner can easily get to a point without the carbon fiber shoe where they will be given the carbon fiber shoe to get to the next level. We're talking about a shoe that makes maybe a minute difference in a marathon. I'd guess more like 30 seconds. The difference in a $500 bike to a $5k one is enormous regardless of the talent of the rider. The upfront cost of starting cycling is so immense that it immediately eliminates most of the world's population. Look where at the countries where the worlds best cyclists come from and realize even within those countries many can't afford to start down the path of a competitive cyclist. It is unlikely that the top cyclists really reflect those in the world who would have the most ability. With running are all the most talented actually on the world's stage? No, but I'd say the top end is a pretty fair reflection of what the best humanity has to offer.

out of africa wrote:

Talent Pools wrote:

I don't want this to slip into a race debate, but cycling, like rowing and many other sports which rely on equipment and technology, are still heavily dominated by white Europeans.

The most dominant stage-racing cyclist of his generation, and the most famous currently racing (4 tour de france wins) is a Kenyan.

That is definitely the exception though, not many multi-cultural pelotons to see out there.