Breakthrough Endurance

A lot of people ask me, "What's the biggest difference between training for running and training for cycling?" The simplest answer is that an athlete should have so much more opportunity to suffer on the bike. If a runner's training not limited by time, motivation, or illness; what is it limited by? It's fatigue and the ability to recover from previous workouts. If recovery was not a limiting factor, he could go out and run 3+ hours, or complete intervals at 5K race pace day after day without the fear of injury or exhaustion. What about the cyclist? Yes, fatigue is a real thing for the cyclist; but mechanically, cycling is very different from running. During cycling an athlete experiences very few eccentric muscle contractions. Meanwhile, the runner is constantly subjecting his quadriceps, hamstrings, hip and plantar flexors to impact forces and eccentric muscle contractions. These eccentric contractions cause muscle damage, in turn causing muscle sorenes...

Interesting research concerning running economy and muscle damage from researchers (and runners) at Georgia State:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24531437 Last year, a colleague and I tried to collect some pilot data assessing ankle jerk/patellar reflexes and running economy following a brutal eccentric workout (drop jumps and leg press). The reflex results were unclear and a broken treadmill threw a wrench into our running economy analysis... What implication(s) could this have for athletes? It would be wise to avoid muscle damage (downhill running, eccentric resistance training) in the 2-3 days before major competitions. Could cross training that elicits less muscle damage than running (cycling, elliptical, swimming) in the days immediately prior to a race increase running economy? Of course, if you have a race coming up that has a substantial amount of downhill, you may be able to attenuate some of the muscle damage that would be attained during the race by consisten...