cycling V's running

PeakOutput

at the moment i am doing a bit of both but i am very suprised at how much easier cycling is than running and am curious as to weather or not id just be better off running instead

for example

the last 2 days iv ran from malahide to portmarnock beach (maybe 4miles) in 20/25mins maybe shorther. i could probably of gone further but i was pretty much spent

today i cycled from malahide to darndale to howth up howth hill (an absolute bitch which you dont notice in the car suprisingly enough) and back to malahide (maybe 18/20 miles) in about an hour and a half...........now the hill killed me and i had to stop 3 times for about 40 secs to get to the top(i wouldnt stop during the run) but when i cycled home i felt fine...no weak legs and honestly felt like i could do the run to portmarnock but i did extra push ups and sit ups instead.....

anyway should i just stop the cycling and do extra running or are they both burning the same amount of calories just in different ways???

hunnymonster

runnning will burn more calories for the same lenght of time but as you've discovered you can keep going for longer when you cycle. Running is also higher impact so you need to build up more slowly. NTW, beach running is very difficult. The soft ground may be more forgivving to your joints but it does require a lot more power to keep moving.

thirtyfoot

hunnymonster wrote:

NTW, beach running is very difficult. The soft ground may be more forgivving to your joints but it does require a lot more power to keep moving.

Also because your foot is unstable when making contact on sand in my opinion running on sand makes you very susceptible to injury. The normal breaking forces in your body have to work overtime to stabilise the body. Even hard sand is dodgy.

irlirishkev

Oh dear God how I hate running on sand. I managed to run about 20miles of the marathon last year, but I can't seem to run for more than 30seconds on sand before wanting to stop and vomit!

Raam

PeakOutput wrote:

anyway should i just stop the cycling and do extra running or are they both burning the same amount of calories just in different ways???

Cycling is great for burning calories. On one of my weekend excursions my watch do-hickey estimated that I burned 6500, that was for an 8 hour cycle in Wicklow. Consider that on a daily basis you would need approx 2500 just to get by. You can see that an hours cycle would burn up about 800 calories, so that is quite a significant amount. Obviously that is particular to the effort which I was putting in.

I cycle Howth a lot (will be out there all Saturday morning), it gets easier the more you do it
If you want hard hills in Howth, go up through St. Fintans (Dublin Bay side), then on the Howth Village side, take the road that goes up the right hand side of the church

I don't know about the running side as I have not measured how much I burn when running.

P

PeakOutput

thanks for all the replies; i forgot to add i was almost killed by an ole granny in a micra in howth village so that probably burned of a few extra calories in the shock............

went for my run today and had to stop twice so the cycle must of taken more out of my legs than i thought yesterday.

im contemplating attempting the dublin city triathlon in september (pipe dream at this stage maybe but i need another goal besides basketball and looking good) .

i might start another thread but ill see if get a responce in this one first.....has anyone got any links to a good olympic distance triathlon training schedule???? if i decide to do it id be training at least 3 times a week if not 5 between now and then

Marathon Man

You may want to design your own programme by taking the best bits from different routines. Also with triathlon you need to focus on your weaknesses which in my case is swimming. Anyway i came across this the other day, it might be useful:

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/triathlon/onph1.htm

Remember training should always be flexible and athlete specific, so a programme that works wonders for one individual may not be applicable to another. If there was only one way to train everyone would be doing it. Anyway wish you success in all your athletic endevours.