Why are elite cyclists and triathletes so bad at running?

Not to pile on but I started a thread about Jesse Thomas winning the Portland half marathon over pro runners. Either he’s really good or the other guys suck.

Also Lance ran a 2:40 marathon on suboptimal training and being heavier than most runners. If he kept at it he could’ve been really good.

Not Fast But Furious wrote:

Not to pile on but I started a thread about Jesse Thomas winning the Portland half marathon over pro runners. Either he’s really good or the other guys suck.

Also Lance ran a 2:40 marathon on suboptimal training and being heavier than most runners. If he kept at it he could’ve been really good.

Many people forget -or weren't aware of it in the first place- that before Armstrong became a full-time cyclist, he was a teenage triathlon prodigy who turned pro at age 16 and was U.S. national short-course tri champion in 1989 and 1990.

Running isn't something he just picked up after finally retiring from cycling.

akser of questions. wrote: Why do professional athletes like football players or basketball players when they retire become professional MMA fighters instead of professional boxers?

boxing : swimming :: mma : triathlon

Boxing is a skill sport that you need to learn from birth to excel at like swimming. MMA is where well-rounded athletes go after they are done with their primary sport similar to triathlon.

Not Fast But Furious wrote:

Not to pile on but I started a thread about Jesse Thomas winning the Portland half marathon over pro runners. Either he’s really good or the other guys suck.

Also Lance ran a 2:40 marathon on suboptimal training and being heavier than most runners. If he kept at it he could’ve been really good.

Jesse Thomas switched to running (he has family and reduced training from 40 hours/week to 10 hours), and ran 50 mpw in preparation for a marathon which is much more than he ran in triathlon. His 1:08 half win came during the marathon prep, and is more of a sign that competition was weak (which "pro" runners did he beat?). He is very heavy tho, and considering he never ran much as he trained for tri's (he was long-distance, who train much less running than Olympic guys) it was a solid result.

Armstrong did an interview with Ryan Hall, and when Hall mentioned he was doing 130 mile weeks Armstrong said he could never imagine something like that and that it's insane. Armstrong did 30+ hours cycling a week which is MUCH more than 100 mpw which take someone like Hall maybe 10 hours .

Also Armstrong only ran 2:46, a somewhat talented runner can run 2:40 with 1 year of training on 40 mpw, so all the lifetime base of cycling didn't seem to help him that much. He had 185 lbs tho, which I'm sure made a massive difference.

It's not that hard for the truly special.

I bet Herb Elliot could have fit your description, elite and swam well enough to be on bad d1 team.

well,, wrote:

Running is a skill that has to be practised, just like any other skill. If you want to be a good tennis player, you have to spend many hours on the tennis court - you won´t reach the same success if you spend some of the time playing table tennis.

It´s the same with running. Doing other endurance sports will train your aerobic system, but that is only half the equation. You also have to practise the skill of running.

What´s the difference between Kenny B in his prime and some who is running 13,30? It´s not that KB has a higher Vo2max or LT - he is better at the art of running.

Hi Jon, back again with half of your old handle?

Herbal Remedy wrote:

I bet Herb Elliot could have fit your description, elite and swam well enough to be on bad d1 team.

they should have a triathalon where you run your races on 3 separate days or morning noon and night, or all in one shot.

swim 1.5k

run 5k

cycle 20k

the distances chosen prove speed and endurance ability, and everyone that trains can do it.

and it's not too long, would be exciting to watch the elites do it.

in fact, i'm going to look into this for training when the work schedule is lower...

what a schedule, swim one day, run next, bike next..

you can score the tri, like a decathlon.....

better that way.

armstrong had a 240 marathon and that is very bad for an aerobic animal.

which tells you something about cycling.

legs and leverage , specific muscle development.

and cycling is probably more anaerobic that you think despite millions of miles done.

talent high schoolers that run around 9 minutes for 2 miles and do 100 miles per week, they can all go sub 240 maration.

armstrong was an example of someone who was totally specicically trained for cycling...

some good runners would not do well cycling also.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

The top triathletes (ITU) are doing 90-100 mpw, in addition to swimming 30 miles and biking 500 miles. Jan Frodeno made a movie about the average training day:

7 am Swim - 5.7km (3.5 miles)

9 am Run - 10km (6.2 miles)

1 pm Bike - 60km (37.3 miles)

4 pm Run - Run including 2 x 2km on hills

6 pm Run - 20 x 400m + 200m active rest in 69/70, jog in 1:50

He said he has 30-40 % intensity in running.

It gives him around 29-30 min 10k off a triathlon, and he also did a 1:05 half in a half-ironman (first 10k at 31:30). That guy is 6'4'', so I think he would have never been able to run 27ish times in a 10k, but in triathlon he can be great (only Solinsky and maybe Mottram come to my mind that succeeded in getting great 10k times despite being tall, but they also did way more than 100 mpw).

There are virtually no ITU racers doing 90-100 mpw in season (most will probably peak around 60 at the MOST, and likely average around 40-50mpw). And almost no Ironman-distance racers are doing that much running either.

You simply can't run that much and train the other sports effectively. That's nearing the volume that a world class elite would run full time.

Exactly, that is huge run milage for even a World Champion ITU athlete. Follow Mola on social media and it is pretty obvious he doesn't do a single triple run day, and only maybe 1 or 2 double run days a week. I have to wonder if it is even true that Yee does 70 mile weeks, at his age that is quite a lot for a runner then to add in all the swim and bike he would be doing doesn't leave much recovery time. That is a lot for one young body to handle.

Pretty sure the person who started this thread is just a Troll, but I would challenge his run PB's now against some of the top ITU athletes when they were maybe 13ish, many of those guys had very impressive times as kids.

Jeremy Rae? He is no where near an elite cyclist. A very good cyclist, but not at the level of this conversation.

Precious Roy wrote:

I have always thought the opposite. I thought that triathletes over excelled at running given the limited amount of training time they have to dedicate to running. Knocking out a sub 29 min 10k after a hard swim and fast bike ride is pretty incredible.

Agree, 20 years ago the OP may have had a point but today the best triathletes are pretty phenomenal runners in their own right. Guys like the Brown Lee brothers or Alex Yee would make the national cross country teams of pretty much any country with the exception of a few East African nations. I wonder whether elite triathletes actually have a much more effective training approach to endurance sports in general which explains their fast running times. Many distance runners may be behind in terms of having the most optimal approach to endurance training even at the top level.

Trolldetector wrote:

5/10

But I will bite:

Triathlon is, just as cycling and xc skiing, still only a white boy-sport. Maybe as popular as track in Europe and US, but not nearly as popular in the rest of the world. If you just picked true Europeans and americans, there wouldn't be many sub 27:30 10k-ers. Or if you got all those eastern africans to live a triathlon related life from the start (swim to school every day, cycle in front of hungry cheetahs, the rest running), I bet there would be quite a few new sheriffs in town.

Bottom line, 28:33 from tri-training translates to, lets say 27:30 from pure running training, which is what it takes to be the best in the sport. Triathlon is still a sport of first world countries.

The old, stupid "as soon as the East Africans focus on a sport they will dominate it" argument. East Africans excel at distance running because of three things: they have the perfect bodies for it and there is a lack of drug testing there, plus the rest of the world focus on the sports where the really big money is.

You might as well say the opposite: if Europeans ran instead of playing soccer or Americans ran instead of playing American football, basketball and baseball they would blow the East Africans out of the water.

I find it hilarious that a 20:00 5K runner is calling out a 28:00 10K runner. On the flip side how many sub 27:00 10K runners can swim at all? Most skinny runners sink like stones when they hit the water. Check out up and coming triathlete Morgan Pearson's running chops: 13:26 5K, seven time all American, placed 3rd at the NCAA indoor championships. Guy just started as a triathlete two years ago and has already won a couple triathlons.

28:33 is bad at running now? Damn I really suck so

elite at checkers but not chess wrote:

Flip it around. Why are runners so bad at swimming? You would be hard pressed to find any elite runner that could even make a bad d1 swim team. Let alone approach international level times.

You would be hard pressed to find many elite runners than could even make a good U12 swim team.

Specificity.

This is like asking why decathletes are so bad at the 1500