On a morning ride with an athlete, she shared with me her dreams of a great marathon off the bike and together we combed through our collective knowledge. In her case, she was a “power” rider who loved to apply her leg strength, accelerate up hills, and show some of our male friends some kick @#$@#% girl power! As her coach, I often joked that loved “getting worked” by her on our long rides!
There is a lot that contributes to a great run off the bike and top of mind is the skill level of the cyclist, gearing choices, and controlled effort. Let’s consider both the quality of the pedal stroke (skill level) and related cadence. With a well-developed pedal stroke, cyclists can ride fast at higher cadences and shift away from higher force riding. It’s quite an undertaking to cycle mindfully and to improve technique, but we can all benefit from developing our cadence range and related pedal strokes. Just start with riding in one gear easier than what feels natural to you (gearing)! As for effort, figure out how to stay conservative and within your limits, using HR, watts, pace, or perceived exertion. For developing triathletes, this applies even more so and bike efforts really need to be controlled, perhaps lower % of FTP or projected efforts.
Simply said, we learn as children to push DOWN on the pedals and go forward, but there is so much more to cycling!
If you cycle with an eye to aerobic endurance and even efforts, you might find the run you want off the bike. In technical terms, this means riding at higher revolutions, reducing your leg burn or “burnt matches” and saving your energy for a great run. Keep those matches in the matchbook! : )
So think of it like this- riding aerobically and focusing on your cardiac efforts could potentially improve your run. Biking more “from your heart” and inducing less leg burn could be the way. Ride “from your heart” aka aerobically, means minding your pedal stroke efficiency and saving your legs. For more reading, click below.
https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2014/04/torque-effectiveness-and-pedal-smoothness
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