Why do bicyclists require so many more hours of training than runners?

"It depends.

I rode in the Olympics as a track cyclist.

I’ve run a 400m in under 46. Good but not Olympic caliber . But not terrible."

Woah. Does that mean you ran a 400 after becoming a track cyclist? or before. Can most track cyclist cover 400m that fast?

greenliner wrote:

standing in the saddle means coming up out of hte seat and standing while you pedal

You stand up FROM the saddle, not "in" the saddle.

No one stands "in" the saddle, unless you're wearing one on your head.

We once welcomed a former world class top athlete in our cycling club. He was a way more talented athlete than any of us, but he was unable to follow the many accelerations in the peloton. All he could do was ride a steady, fast tempo, like 44kph, but he couldn't speed up to 50 kph or more, so he lost contact to the group. A result of his (very high mileage) training as a runner, he claimed. So competitive cycling is more than riding hard tempo, speed is essential.

Something that hasn’t been mentioned is the tremendous influence of the Tour de France, as much sponsorship as all other races put together.

4-5 hours a day. World-class runners cover 9 mph every day for these distances, so it’s an ultra.

Bbggg wrote:

Apart from biking uphill you might as well be riding a moped.

I surmise they don’t bike uphill for 6 hours

Wow. The ignorance here is astonishing, and said with such confidence too. You're completely wrong.

Flat ground you can and do pedal just as hard as uphill. Even downhills can be ridden quite challenging.

And while pros get 6 hours of total uphill time, 4-5 hours is routine.

Ashley Madison wrote:

Cycling is one of the only sports that requires cardio that I know of where a person can be fat, and still be fairly decent. Running not so much.

Okay, yes, a somewhat fat cycling can certainly be more decent than in running. However, this only applies to flat, and at the elite level you still can be fat even on a pancake flat race.

Why?

Well in running you have the constant up and down plus acceleration and deceleration. All of these are dependent on power to weight for how quickly you go.

In cycling, power to weight is the game on hills. On flats, at steady speed, weight becomes almost irrelevant. You stay at near constant speed, so no acceleration. The you have two forces slowing you down. Friction of the tires (rolling resistance), and air "friction" aka wind resistance. Rolling resistance does matter with weight...but at most its perhaps 10-15% of your total power if you're reasonably fast.

The rest come from the air. Your weight doesnt matter. How "big" you are, your frontal area, does. Some complex stuff such as how the air flows over you and how you're shaped does too...but that's too complex here. So a big fat guy youd think would have a bigger frontal area and drag coefficient (CdA). And they do...but on a bike you can get into a tight, compact position that isn't all that much bigger even if you're 6'3" and chubby. Until your gut just starts to bloat massively to the sides, the chub doesnt really raise frontal area much. Bigger guys with chub tend to be more muscular as well, and this usually correlates with more power. So they get a big power increase from being heavy with only small RR and CdA increases.

This is also the core of why big guys over 6 feet tend to be able to dish out savage pain on the flats to the little climbers, but then really struggle with extended steeper climbs.

99900 wrote:

"It depends.

I rode in the Olympics as a track cyclist.

I’ve run a 400m in under 46. Good but not Olympic caliber . But not terrible."

Woah. Does that mean you ran a 400 after becoming a track cyclist? or before. Can most track cyclist cover 400m that fast?

Under 46 would be top 150 in the world. Unless you're from USA, Caribbean, or a few other places, you'd be top 3 in your country. And if it was not the sole focus, you'd definitely be Olympic caliber if you worked on it.

If you're still young, you could go to the Olympics in two different sports, which would be really cool. Go for it!

David S wrote:

Couple suggestions:

1. You can go a lot easier on the bike than you can running. 200 watts is a pretty reasonable power to average for an easy ride and that's only 600 calories/hour, which is like 10 mins/mile. It's hard to run that slow.

You cant really equate watts to minutes per mile. Need to talk w/kg. It's also not true to say 200w for an hour is pretty reasonable average.

If you're a small 5'4" 165cm guy that weighs 50kg, 200w is pretty significant power, and there are very, very, very few guys at that size doing 200w "easy". For a guy like that 200w is almost never easy. If it is, they are an elite amateur or pro.

In fact, for most guys 200w is not "easy". Doable, sure. Easy, no. You can do 200w without being wrecked for an hour threshold is around 240 or so. Decent number of guys have that. For it to be easy, you need at least 270, but for it to be the mins of cruising most associate with 10' miles you need something more like 330+, which is again a 1% or 2% number.

200w for a massive 90kg guy is probably like 9 or 10' miles. For a 60kg guy, it's more like 7:30s to 8:00.

Generally:

1 w/kg - walk effort

2 w/kg - 10:00-12:00 effort

3 w/kg - 8:00 effort

4 w/kg - 6:30 effort

5 w/kg - 5:15 effort

5.5 w/kg - 4 high effort

6 w/kg - 4:40 effort

6.5 w/kg - 4:25 effort

Also, 200w at the median of efficiency values is lower 700 calories. For some people it might be as low as 650/hr and for others as high as about 800/hr

jesseriley wrote:

Something that hasn’t been mentioned is the tremendous influence of the Tour de France, as much sponsorship as all other races put together.

4-5 hours a day. World-class runners cover 9 mph every day for these distances, so it’s an ultra.

This is the heart of it. There are plenty of cyclists in their late teens or esp early twenties who have 20' power numbers on par with Froome or Roglic or Dennis. The fitness can be developed just fine on a more typical 15hr /wk that a runner would train.

What isnt developed is two things. One is the endurance as you said. Younger cyclists rarely have the staying power/resistance to fatigue of top caliber riders. Cycling at pro level is all about who can make huge efforts after 4 or 5 hours of racing. Younger riders rarely have the experience to race efficiently, or the staying power to handle such long races. Even more so when you factor day after day stage races in.

Beyond that, its also a technical thing. You're skill at riding in the peloton improves. Your position keeps getting better. You learn when to sit in and when to let it rip. It's this racecraft and technical development + the fatigue resistance that drives the long hours.

From a purely metabolic fitness standpoint you can be 99% of top level world class, maybe even 100%, doing a focused 15 hrs/wk.

..... wrote:

SashaK wrote:

It depends.

I rode in the Olympics as a track cyclist.

I’ve run a 400m in under 46. Good but not Olympic caliber . But not terrible.

I'm surprised no-one's picked this up. You're an Olympian - that's awesome. Which country, event, year, etc.? And 46 is pretty awesome by anyone's standards.

You forget this is LRC. People make up stuff all the time.

Could cyclists train on less aerodynamic bikes or heavier bikes in order to increase training loads in the same amount of time? Maybe wear weighted vests?

Or set their Pelotons to go on forever inclines.

One consideration is that you actually can cycle 6 hours/day. Cycling has essentially no impact but I don't think even a superhuman person could run 6 hours/day without breaking down. Maybe if you are running the Appalachian Trail or across the US you can run 6 hours/day but its not possible for any sustained period of time

I would not consider being a competitive bicyclists the most efficient manner for runners to train, but the 4 plus hour a day of bicycling makes those guys aerobic monsters. I had a high school XC teammate who cycled nine months a year and was able to race 5K XC sub-16 by his senior XC season. If he would have participated in T&F would he have run faster? Maybe.

I'm on my bike, busting my ass 6 hours a day. What are you on?

zizwami wrote:

We once welcomed a former world class top athlete in our cycling club. He was a way more talented athlete than any of us, but he was unable to follow the many accelerations in the peloton.

What was his racing style on the track? Was he able to sit and kick at the end to win races?

If he didn't have acceleration for the final 400 meters on the track, then that could explain why he couldn't speed up on a bike. The best runner from a small country can still get lapped on a world stage in the 5k.

Banana Bread wrote:

I'm on my bike, busting my ass 6 hours a day. What are you on?

Feel free to state how bicycling translates to your XC and T&F performances.

facts and reason wrote:

What was his racing style on the track? Was he able to sit and kick at the end to win races?

No, he lost a few important races in sprints. He was a sub 28 10k runner though and made it to the Olympics, based on very high mileage training. On the bike, when riding with our group, he was already a bit older. He lacked handling skills and was afraid to 'follow the wheels' and ride in the middle of the peloton, which costed him energy of course.

Agree with everything said above, except focused 15 hours and 99% part. For continental, maybe even some pro conti level pros that might be true somewhat, but at WT level that wont gonna cut it. Endurance requirements there are at another level, rider has to be able to ride 4-6 hours at tempo and them still have enough to be able generate close to his 20min max, when the finishing climb or change of pace comes. Same with being able to those efforts in the middle of the race, recover while riding hard tempo and then repeat again. There is a good article covering this and Will Bartas training progress. Some takeaways:

-To achieve a top-10 result on a summit finish, a rider must be able to ride, at a minimum, 20 minutes at 5.5-5.8 watts/kg after 3,000 kilojoules (kJ) of work.

-Being able to ride for four hours at 4.0 watts/kg with less than five percent heart-rate drift was a gold standard for general aerobic capacity at the U23 European level

-A rider must have the ability to be dynamic under fatigue. “Many of our athletes had the peak power values to be competitive in the top 10, but they lacked the fatigue resistance to access powers over threshold past 2,500 kilojoules of work.” Thus, this became a key area to work: top-end power after 2,500 kJ

LM wrote:

Ashley Madison wrote:

Cycling is one of the only sports that requires cardio that I know of where a person can be fat, and still be fairly decent. Running not so much.

Okay, yes, a somewhat fat cycling can certainly be more decent than in running. However, this only applies to flat, and at the elite level you still can be fat even on a pancake flat race.

Why?

Well in running you have the constant up and down plus acceleration and deceleration. All of these are dependent on power to weight for how quickly you go.

In cycling, power to weight is the game on hills. On flats, at steady speed, weight becomes almost irrelevant. You stay at near constant speed, so no acceleration.

Except that...nobody rides a constant speed other than time trials, and few races are totally flat.

The chubs in local group rides get dropped a couple hours in, after they're a bit tired, the peloton makes a few aggressive moves and they're...gone!

Unlike running where you can claw your way back to a group, once you fall off the back of peloton, you're pretty much never getting back unless you have helpers.

There are no "chubs" in the tdf. I've not seen any chubs cat2 or higher. Some heavier guys in cat3/4, but they have monster legs, skinny jeans don't fit.