sean.hwy

20 mph for an hour riding solo ( not drafting ) is a lot of work. I have only seen a few people that I follow on strava that avg 20 mph riding solo for an hour+ and they only do that a handful times a year.

6 minute mile for an hour is running fast.

LarrySellerz

Cycling at a 20 mph pace on a road bike is way easier than running at a 6 minute mile pace. You have to do a lot of fancy shmancy math to justify that kind of number, and it’s a lie!

wheelreason

Everyone is different, but strictly from a perceived effort perspective, for someone who equally practices both, they are in my experience quite similar.

One Wheel

I both run and bike, and without wind or hills I'm reasonably certain I could maintain 20 mph for at least 10 minutes, probably 20 minutes. Most rides I average 15-16 mph with fairly significant hills. My best ever, flat-out running mile is 6:52.

wheelreason

Did you stop for lunch?....

One Wheel

Nope, just not particularly talented at running. It actually took quite a bit of hard work to get to a sub-7 mile.

wheelreason

Larger, sometimes muscular guys will skew towards the bike, and lanky or smaller folks to the run, but again, everyone is different. I think anyone who trains properly and is of average ability (and isn't overly mature) can roll at 20 MPH or run a 6 minute mile.

One Wheel

I'm probably on the more muscular side. I still have some flab to lose at 5'9" 190 lbs, I'd be pretty lean at 170. It would be much easier for me ride at 20 mph than run a 6 minute mile, but both would be possible with work.

terrymorse 

Same for me. When I was running all the time, a 6-minute pace was not that hard, as long as it was flat and not windy. And 20 mph cycling on a flat course was a tempo pace.

rossiny

shouldn't burn you up,, A marathoner running to work, even a couple times a week, would burn out. On a bike, you can ride to work and back home, and not burn out... PS i used to run a bit of track and cross country and I can tell you a 5 mile race to me feels like a 40 mile bike ride at touring pace, of course I did my first mile in the 5 mile race under 5 minutes(a few moons ago), and that was on the cross country trail.

ofajen

The calculations I’ve done (and other online calculators) consistently say that running a 6 minute pace or 10 mph is twice (4.7 W/kg) the effort of cycling 20 mph on a road bike (2.35 W/kg). Riding at 26 mph, however, requires the equivalent 4.7 W/kg power of a 6 minute mile.

Otto

rosefarts

I’ve ran 4 marathons. None since I was older than 22 or so. I’m in mid 40’s now. I’ve ridden probably a hundred or more centuries, none last year due to time constraints, bummer.

Heres my recollection. Running kind of beats me up. Even when I was young and fit, I just needed time off. I don’t recall the 3.5 to 4 hours of effort being all that taxing but it’s definitely not easy.

I think there are a handful of rare gifted people who have such a smooth running stride that they don’t suffer the beating that most of us do. Those people probably can run significant distances every day. Just like you or I can ride every day.

I met some old dude on the bus to the starting point of the Vegas marathon who seemed to run about 15-20 marathons a month. Took him 6 hours to do it but he never needed to stop. They do exist.

The inherent smoothness and low impact of bicycles totally messes up how to compare the two.

ofajen

Yeah, you can evaluate and compare power requirements, but the foot impact force of running is so much higher that the overall effect is hard to compare in a meaningful way.

Otto

Scrib4lex

As a runner who recently took up cycling and cycles the same loop i run i can offer the following:

my loop is about 10k or 6.25 miles with about 260 feet of elevation. The 10k run takes me about 48 minutes while to bike ride takes me around 22min when intentionally riding to exercise, so pushing myself. I think whomever put the 4.6 ish ratio up there is pretty darn close. There is a shorter 1.6 mile loop and a 2 mile loop. Running somewhere between those two feels like cycling the big 10k 6.25 mile loop for me.

wheelreason

I thinlk it's not so much a few folks who do it right, as there are so many that do it wrong. My knees and ankles hurt just watching some folks "running". Ideally, you don't want to throw your body up in the air with each stride, you want your feet bearly clearing the ground, and brushing the ground while not landing on your heels. A running shoe with a level sole helps, a lot of shoes have exagerated heel padding, which makes it almost impossible to run correctly.

hayden52

I respectfully disagree. The correct number is 3.8168.

sean.hwy

running is harder zero argument there. It's harder on your joints etc..

let;s assume college athlete almost zero body fat yadayda etc...no old man/women joint issues etc...

there's a big difference between walking/hiking and RUNNING.

it's harder to define biking when you can coast, soft pedal etc..

someone would need to define what your W/kg = to RUNNING not hiking/walking.

Then if you always kept your W/kg the same or higher than what it is to running it would probably be a very close work out.

People are saying they can ride all day but only run for a few hours etc.. Well the same can be said I can hike/walk ( that would be like coasting or soft pedaling ) all day 10+ hours but I would die on bike trying to maintain 23 mph for any length of time.

ofajen

See posts #65, 66, 74, and 87.

Otto

ScottCommutes

Yeah, biking is literally designed to be an easier way of getting around.

You can compare energy output, but that ignores the stresses running puts on the body. Biking isn't much more than sitting down and moving your legs in circles (and you can glide when you want to). Running, on the other hand, is like a harder kind of walking - only semi-athletic folks even do it.

LarrySellerz

agreed, you can take it so easy when cycling. I live on an insane hill, and often traverse (do the zig zag) to an extreme degree to just negate the hill. Once when my ribs were bruised and I couldn’t put down power, a woman walking her dog passed me as I’m doing my zig zags. I think of this as not even engaging with the hill, like no I’m not going to spend energy getting up this time

terrymorse 

This is about walking vs. biking, but it's a cool quote:

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. -- Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs, 1978

tomato coupe

Dude, you were dropped by a woman walking her dog ...

wheelreason

Did she know they were racing?....

wheelreason

Yeah, but if I sit on my horse, let it munch on some field, and steer him towards a stream every so often (no matter what he decides to do once there), from MY metabolic perspective, that is much more efficient, even if I include the energy used in scraping the dung off my boot every so often...
Seriously though, cycling is much more efficient than walking or running, but the question is what would be an equivalent or similar workout, two different things.

RChung

You know all those post-apocalyptic books and movies where people are walking through deserts? Why aren't there post-apocalyptic books and movies where people are riding bikes?