Coming into cycling from another sport

pprendeville

All through the years I've been a hurler and played a lot of soccer as well. Am almost 29 now and am wondering what people feel like on the bike in terms of how difficult is compared with other sports.

Personally, I think cycling requires a lot more commitment to get to a high level. Lots of training involved initially to get you to a certain level only to start racing and realise there are others light years ahead. Found that with hurling/soccer, training 4 hours/week was sufficient. Not that much running in a match unless playing in the middle of the park and it was mainly short sprints.

Cycling is a different beast altogether. Interested in others opinions.

blorg

Cycling would place more emphasis on pure physical fitness I think, compared to the other sports you mentioned. There is skill and a mental side to bike racing too but not to the same extent as field sports where being fit is a smaller part of the puzzle, and skill is very important. To a greater extent in bike racing you can get away with being a bit thick if you have the horsepower. As you noted it is also an endurance sport; even for the sprinters, who have to get to the line before they can sprint.

Lumen

I don't think cycling is necessarily any harder than other non-ball sports, say swimming or running.

Sure, you can turn up at a running race and attempt to feckin win the thing, but you're not actually going to have any hope of being competitive unless you put in the hours. The nature of the sport just allows people of vastly different abilities to compete in the same physical space without injuring each other.

I'd rather spend ten hours a week on the bike than ten hours in a chlorine-filled pool.

RobFowl

Lumen wrote: »

Sure, you can turn up at a running race and attempt to feckin win the thing, but you're not actually going to have any hope of being competitive unless you put in the hours.

Hence the :rolleyes: whenever anyone who finds out you cycle asks "have you ridden the Tour de France??"

shaungil

I did rugby for years before getting into cycling via marathon and triathlon.

I never trained as hard as in rugby as I do for cycling as you say a few ours a week but then that was the peer expectation train twice a week game at weekend. also for rugby cos it was hard ont he body you couldn't really do much more than that anyway.

However like any team sport you do get more comradery and pushing each other on which I've only got in my club in the last year or so as we've made a concerted effort to do that it is still an individual sport. You mainly get out what you put in whereas team sport you can be personally much better or worse than your teams results.

After the a while the brain power does come but I think a lot of that is experience of racing too. Like any sport it is as ahard as you want to make it because if you train hard and do well you get upgraded so you will eventually get to your natural level.

kennyb3

I agree with blorg.

Yes, cycling can be time consuming especially when you are coming to it late and trying to play catch up. But as blorg alludes to it is very 'accessible' in that virtually anybody can take it up, put hours in and race as there isnt that much skill involved.

In contrast imagine trying to take up hurling now and learning all the skills - i reckon you d need alot more than 4 hours and even then you might just not have the skill for it.

Also I think you have to look at the various levels. I've no doubt that someone who grew up cycling and raced from an early age could get by on 6 hours (3hr weekend spin and 2/3 fast 1hr midweek spins)(or maybe less) to ride around A4, much the same way 4 hours is sufficient for your average hurling team.

Go up a level and both require more.

As an example on the opposite side I use to play soccer for a club, the school team and a representative squad at one stage and would have up to 4 matches a week (i even once remeber playing 6 matches in 7 days) plus one or two training sessions being about 10hours total.

I think you can but as much or as little in depending on the level you want to achieve.