Relationship between Bike & Run threshold stress
G'day folks - being a noob to multi-sport I'm intrigued as to the relationship between the physiological gains made by work at run threshold and that of cycling.
In other words - will training stress at FTP, irrespective of discipline, be mutually beneficial? I can defintely see why this relationship would exist with teh cardio' system but what about muscular endurance.
How far will the running threshold contribute to bike FTP?
Just wondering, any budding sports scientists out there can share the theory?
Cheers,
Dave
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Comments
The really short, only kinda trite, answer is "not much". Think about how low the FTP on most elite marathoners would be, if they tested tomorrow. IIRC, that experiment was done at IMWI a few years back, and wasn't pretty.
Now, that being said, it does contribute to overall fitness, which could be thought of as more of a roof. So, really high run fitness might give you more "potential" for bike fitness than just average run fitness. IOW, if you took a couch potato or a runner, and asked them to do an FTP test, the runner should do better, just because they're overall more fit.
There does seem to be a point of tradeoff at the truly elite level. Either going to require more muscle to up FTP, but at the expense of running well, or vice-versa. Fortunately, none of us have to worry about that
Mike
For our purposes here, there is probably about zero relationship.
In '03, while training for Kona, I rolled my ankle very, very badly on a training run and didn't run for 10wks before Kona. My first run in 10wks was a six mile out and back in the Energy Lab. Instead, I rode my ass off and go ludicrously strong....on the bike, and rode a 5:08 on race day. I ran most of the marathon, and was certainly not fast (I think a 4:15 or so). I think I was able to run because I was pretty stoopid fit but I was certainly in no running shape. At some point, fitness x + body comp y + experience z + pain tolerance/stubborness = IM marathon time of whatever...but you're not getting it because your bike fitness has transferred over to the run, but rather because you're very fit and even a shuffle is 9:00+ at that point.