Having done the Brass Monkeys yesterday I just wondered whether there was any comparison between Endurance Riding and running. What for example in MTB terms, would compare with the effort needed to do a Half Marathon ?

90 min of hard cycling? Distance is difficult as terrain can be varied. It takes far less effort to cycle down a hill than to run it. Perhaps comparing calories burnt is useful.

In terms of how knackered it leaves me, a pretty intense 90min single speed blast is still a good way short of my reg 45min (fairly flat) run. I’m not a fast runner though, (9min/mile).

I tried to work this out after the Dyfi Enduro. This was about 45k with a lot (hell of a lot) of climbing. I figured that it was about a half marathon.

If you have endomondo on a smartphone it does in theory calculate the calories burned – a good a measure as any I guess.

My hunch would be 1 mile run = 5 mile mountain bike ride

horses Vs cows

I reckon running, but only if you’re running fast rather than jogging. Used to be able to do a 6 minute mile, lost that but that was bloody hard, would leave my pretty trashed afterwards. Biking leaves me tired but I don’t normally get that trashed.

I’ve done the Old County Tops fell race for the last few years. Nothing I’ve ever done on a bike has left me feeling as battered as that. Including the Kielder 100 or riding 210 road miles in a day.

A full-on half-marathon at a decent pace will leave you aching as much as a hilly 100-miler no problem. If not more.

It’s kinda like the difference between one round of actual boxing vs 10 rounds of shadow boxing – all about the impact.

Riding a bike at 10-15 mph, you are using the same amount of energy as you are walking.

really depends on terrain, in the heavily rooted and very muddy local woods I can run a lot of sections as fast as I can cycle them, however most of the time a bike would win hands down.

biking is low impact on the joints so even if you did the same run/bike calorie-wise, you would feel a lot less battered on the bike

Agree with above post (dreednya). Just looking at energy used, even if the same for a run vs bike would not = physical effect on the body. You will not see many pro runners able to do regular 20-30 hr training week due to the impact. However you can manage it on a bike, its why most pro cyclist will have better ‘aerobic’ systems than a pro runner. Very different activities that place different demands on the body so hard to compare ‘effort’, just look at Lance when he tried a marathon, got quite a poor time despite a exceptionable aerobic system.

Its because steroids dont help runners surely?

I can quite happily ride my bike all day,

But I ran for the bus last week and nearly died 😳

So i’m pretty sure its all relative. I will be doing more running now maybe once or twice a week to get a reasonable level for “running” fitness. I don’t think its right to think I can do 50k on the bike for 10k would be a piece of pi55, some people it won’t be a problem others it will.

I think a lot depends on the terrain.

There’s a runners versus riders event every december near Ludlow. It’s a tough, roughly 10 mile circuit. It’s normally won in about 1hr 10mins. On average the runners have won more times than the riders, but it’s always close.

SB

Other way around for me. I regularly used to run 8 mile a day and 12 on weekends. A 100mile off-road is beyond me now and would have been in my running days. One gets acclimatised to running, but I would have to train seriously hard to do a 100mile of proper mountain biking.

I often cross train between the two and wear heart rate monitors etc so the readings for calories burnt are reasonably accurate.

Running is a much more aerobic sport for me than biking and will see my average heart rate up above 150 where as biking my average is nearer 140.

Calories burnt during a 5k run is normally around 450 where as it takes a 15 km ride to burn the same on the bike.

I was chatting to my brother in law about this last year.

We did a 110 mile bike ride and I asked him if it was harder than running a marathon.. he said definately not although I wonder why & assume that it is down to the body getting battered more.
It took us just over 7 hours, I did not have a heart rate monitor on but we were not taking it that easily. The Marathon took him 4 hours at a not dissimilar energy output so in theory the ride should have been harder.

I run 4-5 times a week now and mountain bike once. Running is far harder for me but then again I’m still getting to grips with how to moderate my heart rate and effort while running, in other words when I run I run flat out.

But what I do know is that when I run 10k it feels like i’ve done a 50k on the bike!

I’d personally say, its a time thing not a distance thing.

1hr hard off road run = 3hr tuff off road ride or 5hr steady road ride. 😳

There used to be a race in Wales, man v horse v bike, over a 25m xc mountain route, I think Nick Craig may have even won it once or twice 8) ………….

Sadly Its now just man v horse now, due to access issues 🙁

Here is an interesting comparison for calories burnt per type of sport. http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburned.htm

Obviously, cycling is more efficient than running i.e you can get further per calorie burnt. Therefore a direct comparison is not useful. Using the table in the link above you can see that ‘Cycling, Vigourous 14 – 15.9 mph’ for a 155lb person consumes about 704 calories. This is the same for ‘Running, 6 mph’. Thefore, cycling is about 2.5 time more efficent. Thus, a cycling marathon should be about 105 miles.

I would say for me a 1 hr run is the equivalent to a 4-5hr mtb race, Running does get easier as time goes on and is highly addictive once you catch the bug
..There is another thing – its much,much cheaper! I saved a fortune in drivetrain since i started running 😉

I saved a fortune in drivetrain since i started running

That’s cos you haven’t had to replace your knees yet.

I would say running is much harder. But I wonder if the answers are slightly screwed by being on a mtb forum.

do you think anyone on a running forum would say cycling is harder ?

I run and ride, on and off road. I’d say that running is far harder than riding because you’re supporting your own weight as well as propelling yourself forward, impacting your joints and bouncing your stomach up and down, making it difficult to eat anything other than gels and sipping water. That said, I find it much easier to pace myself over a running race than I do in an MTB race as running races are held on broad courses and you can start slowly and pass people later, always keeping your heart rate below lactate threshold, which for me is in the high 160s.

In all of the MTB races I’ve done, the course was very narrow from the start and I’ve felt pressured into maintaining a fast pace early on to avoid holding up the rest of the field. I’ve had heart rates in the 170s and 180s, which is definitely a bad idea for a 3 hour race. Starting further back isn’t an option as it’s hard to work your way up the field later, when all the fast-starters are getting tired.

I’m now doing winter duathlons (off road run, MTB, off road run) as part of marathon training as they’re typically 2.5 hours long and teach the heart, lungs and energy reserves to last longer. But, because of the cycling leg, they have way less of an impact on my fragile legs than an equivalent 2.5 hour run.