Running Intervals Boosts Cycling

charliew87

Pretty much stopped running when I started cycling a year ago. Whenever I go for a run I've been hopeless, no matter how cycling fit I was at the time.

However when approaching it the other way...

http://bicycling.com/blogs/thehub/2012/ ... s-cycling/

t.m.h.n.e.t

Nothing spectacular really. Of course an exercise type that stresses more of your CV system will lead to gains.

Cycling specific gains, no - gains yes

jgsi

Probably a conspiracy from Strength and Conditioning musclemen to stop us going fast on a bike.

Alex_Simmons/RST

If the author thinks you can't do sufficiently hard HIIT on a bike, he's clearly never heard of vomitals.

Trev The Rev

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

If the author thinks you can't do sufficiently hard HIIT on a bike, he's clearly never heard of vomitals.

I find this study surprising. It would appear there is just the one 'elite' athlete in the study, how elite?

If you come to cycling from other sports, and are very fit aerobically, it can be difficult to get your heart rate up as high cycling as you could doing the sport or sports you have been doing. This is common with very fit runners & rowers when they begin cycling. But in time the legs become more cycling specific and are able to tax the aerobic system to the maximum. But I am surprised an elite cyclist is able to hit higher heart rates running than cycling.

However the sports scientist has done a study so we should not discard it out of hand.

The improvements the subject made are massive. 10.3% improvement in vo2Max, I wonder if this was due to weight loss? Was the 10.3% increase in total oxygen uptake or 10.3% increase in uptake per kilo? No power figures are given, so I assume the TT performance improvement was a 14.9% improvement in time. Again a massive improvement for an already elite athlete but not for a relatively untrained individual.

I would think, given the few facts we have been given, that the subject was tired when first tested, or not particularly fit in the first place and trained like a complete idiot before the start of the study, or lost considerable weight throughout the course of the study, or all of these.

TakeTurns

My heart rate goes up more whilst running uphill as supposed to riding uphill.

When I try to ride uphill as hard as possible, it's not my breathing which gets out of control, it's the lactic acid in the legs.

With running however, it's my breathing that goes out of control and my heart is racing because there are more muscles engaged which oxygen needs to be transported to.

The study makes complete sense and I believe running intervals for me have worked too.

Trev The Rev

I found this when I started cycling again but after several months my max cycling heart rate equaled my running heart max rate but it does take longer to hit it cycling. In the past I wore a heart rate monitor fencing, squash, judo, boxing and rowing and my max is near enough the same across the sports but cycling seems to take longer to get there.

However I always get puffed out before lactate becomes intolerable up hill cycling or running.

I would be interested to know what Alex thinks about the study.

I'm open minded on this one but it is the amount of improvement I find surprising = the improvements are massive. Not the sort of improvements you would expect to see in an already well trained elite cyclist. PEDs excluded.

shockedsoshocked

Cycling isn't weight bearing and has a very limited amount of muscle recruitment, so it is more difficult to get your HR up than say running, or an exercise that requires large amounts of muscle mass like rowing.

The intervals it suggest (4 mins at 90-95% max hr) should be easy enough to do on the bike.

Harley35

Running works for me when I don't have much time, 30 mins running makes my legs feel like 4 hours on the bike.