RUNNING FOR CYCLISTS: DOES RUNNING MAKE YOU A BETTER CYCLIST?

Adding runs to your exercise routine can be an effective way to improve your cardiovascular fitness, make you a better all-around athlete and keep things fresh, particularly by mixing outdoor runs with indoor training miles during the colder winter months.

Done correctly, combining running and cycling should create a complementary cross-training effect and enhance overall athleticism.

Done poorly, however, running can quickly cause injuries due to the high load it puts on the body, specifically joints, bones and connective tissues.

In this article, we’ll cover how running and cycling differ, the benefits and possible downsides of running for cyclists, and how to minimize the risk of injury or overtraining if you add running to your exercise routine.

RUNNING FOR CYCLISTS: SHOULD YOU DO IT AT ALL?

Whether or not you should add running to your exercise routine depends on your goals and the time you have available for training and recovery.

As one study in the journal Sports Medicine states, cross-training effects will not exceed those of sport-specific training. Therefore, if your goal is to maximize performance on the bike, and you have limited time to train, it’s probably best to add more cycling-specific workouts to sharpen your fitness.

If you don’t mind sacrificing some sport-specific benefits, or you have extra time for training and proper recovery, running can help keep things fresh and serve as a useful, time-efficient alternative to the bike. And, as the above study indicates, there is “some transfer of training effects” between running and cycling.

Because running puts a greater demand on your body than cycling, it’s essential to give your body time to recover fully before adding more load, especially in the beginning, while your tissues are adapting to the new stimulus. If not, you may experience the effects of overtraining or suffer an injury.

KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RUNNING AND CYCLING

The main difference between cycling and running is the impact or load each has on your body.

In cycling, the weight of the body is supported by the bike, so the load is lower.

In contrast, running is a weight-bearing activity with high impact due to the high forces that the body absorbs when the feet meet the ground. This places greater stress on muscles, bones, and joints. This difference is why cycling is often used as a recovery tool for connective tissue injuries (tendons, ligaments, cartilage) frequently experienced by runners.

Cycling is also a much more limited movement than running, done in a relatively fixed position. On the bike, most of the lower body is working, but the glutes and quadriceps do most of the work, and the cardiovascular demand is high compared to the musculoskeletal demand, meaning recovery can be shorter.

In running, the work is more equally shared between the upper and lower legs, and the cardiovascular demand isn’t as high in comparison to the demand on the musculoskeletal system, especially for less-experienced runners. As a result, recovery is longer as connective tissues take longer to adapt to stress.

DOES RUNNING MAKE YOU A BETTER CYCLIST?

As mentioned above, if you’re training as a competitive cyclist, running probably won’t make you a better cyclist, unless it’s used in addition to a cycling training program that already maximizes cycling-specific adaptation and ensures optimal recovery.

For cyclists with limited training time and (probably) lower recovery abilities than competitive athletes, it’s usually not possible to fit in enough hours of training to maximize our performance on the bike, if that’s the goal.

Again, while running isn’t as effective as cycling for on-bike performance, there should be some transfer of cardiovascular benefits. It will also contribute to a healthier, more balanced physique by training more muscles and putting load on the bones to maintain bone health.

Cyclists are up to seven times more likely to have low bone mineral density (weaker bones) than runners, according to a study published in Metabolism, though this may not be a causal effect of running.

All that considered, most of us enjoy our training more when it’s varied. If the variety of running helps keep you motivated to exercise, this is an overall positive for your health, and it may indirectly make you a better cyclist.

IS CYCLING GOOD OR BAD FOR RUNNERS?

Cycling is an excellent low-impact way for runners to maintain their cardiovascular fitness and develop the musculature in their legs. Cycling’s low-impact nature makes it especially useful for active recovery. Replacing some low-intensity runs with cycling gives the body’s tissues more time to recover.

The cardiovascular training effect was shown in a study performed on 11 female collegiate runners and published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. By replacing 50 percent of their running volume with cycling, these athletes could “adequately maintain aerobic performance during the recuperative phase between the cross-country and track seasons, comparable to the primary sport of running.”

The same journal published another study of high-school male runners that also showed a beneficial cross-training effect by replacing two easy runs per week for four weeks with bike rides. These runners made bigger improvements to their 3,000-metre performance than those who kept everything the same.

Of course, aerobic performance is just one facet of overall performance; cycling training will not impart running-specific benefits such as improvement to running economy and tissue conditioning.​