What's the running equivalent of a stage of the Tour, in terms of intensity and effort? They can't race all out every day, so at appromately what % do they ride each day?
19k Time trial ~ ?k running race at ?% effort?
200k stage ~ ?k running at ?% effort?
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The longest stages take between 4-6 hours for the riders on the bike at a fast controlled pace. You couldn't however, have runners running/jogging/slogging/walking 4 to 6 hours a day. I would say a 'long' running stage would most practically be 2 hours at the longest. This wouldn't necessarily be a fast pace, even when compared to an athlete's marathon pace. A distance that took the racers an hour to cover would allow for more tempo running day in and day out.
The 19k time trial this year was won by American Dave Zabriske in just a shade over 20 minutes. Lance was two seconds behind. This is an all-out effort for them, so I would just go on a relative time comparison and suggest a 4 mile running stage, completely flat.
When it comes to the mountains, you could take a page right out of last year's tour, and get a race from the bottom to the summit of le Alp d'Huez, which I think is ten miles long.
It would be like running a marathon every day for 3 weeks with about one week of mountain marathon runs runs plus a 8k time trial run and a 15k time trial. But when you run you pound your body much harder so you probably wouldn't last.
That is waaaaaay off. As much as a biker would love to consider it to be that hard there is no way. 80% of the tour is coasting at (for them) a comfortable pace. I agree with the first poster much more.
The running Tour would be like a few 5k-8k time trials along with some 10-15 mile JOGS (with racing at the end).
WithMeSoFar? wrote:
It would be like running a marathon every day for 3 weeks with about one week of mountain marathon runs runs plus a 8k time trial run and a 15k time trial. But when you run you pound your body much harder so you probably wouldn't last.
Which obviously disqualifies your example as "the running equivalent."