Interval training Running with Cycling dangers and benefits?
bunterc
Posts: 4 Member
Hi there, this is my first post so sorry for the ramblings in advance 
I have recently been training myself up to be able to run 10 miles followed immediately after by cycling 20 miles. I trained for this by starting at 2 miles run/4 mile cycle then added 10% on every 2nd day. After plateauing a few times at 5, 7, 8 mile run stages I'm now up to 9 run and 18 mile cycle.
So that's where I'm at just now, I still have another stone I want to lose so I'm trying to shock my body into dropping it. Yesterday I tried out some new training that I dreamed up, this was to run medium pace for 2 miles, switch to bike to cycle 4 miles, then repeat this 3 times. So this would be 6 miles ran and 12 miles cycled. Now usually I could manage the 6 & 12 miles running/cycling no problem, but doing it as intervals really knocked me for six and I could only manage 5.4 miles running and 8 miles cycling before fatigue really kicked in. So my question is, am I doing myself more harm than good by attempting this once a week or is it a great way to shock the body into calorie burning. I dont know anything about the dangers of switching between the two muscle groups associated with both sports and cant find any info online, hoping someone out there can help. Historically I have big problems with my back/sciatica so dont want to mess things up there but touch wood its going pretty good so far.
I have recently been training myself up to be able to run 10 miles followed immediately after by cycling 20 miles. I trained for this by starting at 2 miles run/4 mile cycle then added 10% on every 2nd day. After plateauing a few times at 5, 7, 8 mile run stages I'm now up to 9 run and 18 mile cycle.
So that's where I'm at just now, I still have another stone I want to lose so I'm trying to shock my body into dropping it. Yesterday I tried out some new training that I dreamed up, this was to run medium pace for 2 miles, switch to bike to cycle 4 miles, then repeat this 3 times. So this would be 6 miles ran and 12 miles cycled. Now usually I could manage the 6 & 12 miles running/cycling no problem, but doing it as intervals really knocked me for six and I could only manage 5.4 miles running and 8 miles cycling before fatigue really kicked in. So my question is, am I doing myself more harm than good by attempting this once a week or is it a great way to shock the body into calorie burning. I dont know anything about the dangers of switching between the two muscle groups associated with both sports and cant find any info online, hoping someone out there can help. Historically I have big problems with my back/sciatica so dont want to mess things up there but touch wood its going pretty good so far.
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Replies
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There's no such thing as "shock your body" - that's simply twaddle.
Its twaddle twin myth is that you adapt to exercise and stop burning calories - complete nonsense.
You are calorie burning every moment you are alive.
If you aren't losing weight over an extended period of time you aren't in a calorie deficit.
Why not actually follow a plan (or plans) designed for your goals?
Either a running plan and a cycling plan suitable to your current status and goals of possibly a duathlon training plan?6 -
If i saw a plan that fitted into my lifestyle of dayshift and nightshifts, that also catered for both running and cycling at the same time then I'd be all over it, however I cant havent come across one so far.
My plan recently has been
Monday - Long Run/cycle
Wednesday - Long Cycle
Thursday - short run
Friday - Running/Cycling intervals
Sunday - Long Run/cycle (restarting the plan)
This is burning about 5500 calories a week which is my goal. If there are similar plans out there id love to see them.0 -
You're doing a duathlon. Get some pool time in, and you're doing a tri. And people do it every weekend, all the time. Enjoy using your body!5
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I'm not a runner but there's loads of cycling plans, I used a British Heart Foundation one for example.
Not seeing why shift work and following a plan wouldn't work? Surely that gives you more daylight training opportunities?
Have you looked at duathlon training plans? (I see BHF again have beginner training plans.)3 -
Assuming you really need to lose a stone, trying to lose weight merely by exercising more is very hard. You are better off coming up with a combined exercise and diet plan. MFP has tools to help you plan your diet based on your activity. Take it steady though, or you will be poleaxed by fatigue.
Building muscle and getting fitter is an anabolic activity. Losing weight is a catabolic activity. The two processes are antagonistic and you should be planning to do one or the other, not both at the same time. Basically, a rule of thumb (for mortals) is don't do HIIT if you are on a diet, it will immensely stress your body. Stick to steady exercise within your current capabilities.
Having said that, most seem to agree that shaking up your exercise routine is no bad thing as your muscles get accustomed to doing things a certain way. It will always use more energy if you start to do something unfamilar because you are less efficient. Any triathlete will tell you that running immediately after getting off a bike is tough (I certainly found it so; my legs were like wet celery), probably because of the way your muscles tighten up when cycling, and they train to get over the transition. I've never tried it the other way around.
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hypocacculus wrote: »Assuming you really need to lose a stone, trying to lose weight merely by exercising more is very hard. You are better off coming up with a combined exercise and diet plan. MFP has tools to help you plan your diet based on your activity. Take it steady though, or you will be poleaxed by fatigue.
Building muscle and getting fitter is an anabolic activity. Losing weight is a catabolic activity. The two processes are antagonistic and you should be planning to do one or the other, not both at the same time. Basically, a rule of thumb (for mortals) is don't do HIIT if you are on a diet, it will immensely stress your body. Stick to steady exercise within your current capabilities.
Having said that, most seem to agree that shaking up your exercise routine is no bad thing as your muscles get accustomed to doing things a certain way. It will always use more energy if you start to do something unfamilar because you are less efficient. Any triathlete will tell you that running immediately after getting off a bike is tough (I certainly found it so; my legs were like wet celery), probably because of the way your muscles tighten up when cycling, and they train to get over the transition. I've never tried it the other way around.
Absolutely agree that it's easier to effect weight change from the eating side of the equation, and that it's unrealistic to expect changes just from exercise if one doesn't at least hold eating steady (via calorie counting or very careful portion control). I was obese for over a decade while very active, even competing as a masters athlete. It was easy to out-eat the exercise, and for many of us (not all), appetite increases with exercise.
I agree with PPs that intensity (be it steady high-intensity workouts, or intervals) is not the most effective if one's most important goal is weight loss. Intensity is more taxing on the body. This has two consequences: We can tolerate only shorter workouts; and it can bleed calories out of our daily life activity (because intensity increases fatigue, and fatigue makes us do less and rest more, putting it simplistically). Furthermore, the EPOC effect of intensity is over-rated (do the math with real cases; you'll see what I mean).
Don't get me wrong: Some intense exercise is a valid, useful, even necessary part of achieving many fitness goals, after a certain base level of fitness is in place. But that's fitness, not weight loss.
I disagree, though, that there's a meaningful difference in energy expenditure through efficiency changes between trained and untrained activities (for most common activities, and certainly for cycling and running). A fit/trained runner or cyclist will burn roughly the same calories as an unfit/untrained person of the same size, over the same course, with the same equipment, at the same speed, for the same amount of time.
We tend to believe otherwise because it feels so much harder to the untrained/unfit person, and because heart rate monitors may (falsely) give a higher calorie estimate to the untrained/unfit person because their heart is beating out of their chest while the trained person is barely breaking a sweat. But the work is the same, so the energy requirement to do the work is the same, and efficiency is a small factor in these activities, so generates only a small difference at most. (P.S. This is why METS-based estimates of energy expenditure are a standard.)
OP, overdoing is not your friend, whether your goal is weight loss or fitness. Sijomial has given you very good advice (as he usually does). If your goal is actually fitness, then a duathlon plan sounds like a good idea.
"Shocking the body" is not a thing, it won't help you burn extra calories, and (in itself) it won't keep you from achieving weight loss. Since you've worked up, it should be fine to do something more intense once a week, but it will necessarily be a shorter workout, and it may be counterproductive to your weight loss goal (you appear to have the training time available, and you'll get the best calorie burn doing long/steady work at an intensity you can sustain without carrying fatigue into the rest of daily life).
I honestly don't know whether your alternating biking and running on your intense day is better or worse than doing intervals on one, then the other . . . but a duathlon plan should answer that quite clearly.2 -
The issue with using exercise to create your deficit is, what happens when you're injured or life happens and you can't do that level of exercise?
Look at your food intake for your deficit, and exercise for fitness or enjoyment.
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Just chiming in to 2nd @AnnPT77's advice... I can run a mile in 6 minutes and I can run a mile in 8 minutes. The calories burned are nearly identical. The difference is I can run a marathon doing 8 minutes miles while I'm completely wasted after only 3 miles when running at 6 min pace. If you want to burn more, slow down!
Of course once you start getting the miles high your body demands more fuel which is one reason why you can't count on exercise to lose weight.3 -
I disagree, though, that there's a meaningful difference in energy expenditure through efficiency changes between trained and untrained activities (for most common activities, and certainly for cycling and running). A fit/trained runner or cyclist will burn roughly the same calories as an unfit/untrained person of the same size, over the same course, with the same equipment, at the same speed, for the same amount of time.
Fair point and I'm sure very valid for running and cycling. However, if you are a swimmer with no technique.... :-O1 -
SweatsOnSunday wrote: »You're doing a duathlon. Get some pool time in, and you're doing a tri. And people do it every weekend, all the time. Enjoy using your body!
^^This. Also called a brick, bike run ick.1 -
hypocacculus wrote: »
I disagree, though, that there's a meaningful difference in energy expenditure through efficiency changes between trained and untrained activities (for most common activities, and certainly for cycling and running). A fit/trained runner or cyclist will burn roughly the same calories as an unfit/untrained person of the same size, over the same course, with the same equipment, at the same speed, for the same amount of time.
Fair point and I'm sure very valid for running and cycling. However, if you are a swimmer with no technique.... :-O
I'll take your word: In my world, as an on-water rower, swimming feels like failure, so I avoid it (yes, I need to know how to swim, and I practice sometimes, and have worked on technique . . . but I know little about the efficiencies).
In machine rowing**, efficiency is a big factor . . . but the effect is that beginners burn a lot of calories that the machine doesn't capture (because the work goes into slide speed, mostly, and not into the flywheel), and if their technique doesn't improve they hit a wall beyond which they can't burn more calories per minute (because the person rowing, not the machine, makes the workout more challenging by getting work into the flywheel). So, beginners at machine rowing don't necessarily burn more calories per minute, but they burn many more calories per meter (because they get so few meters for the amount of effort
). I wonder if swimming might be similar?
** Also true in on-water rowing, but harder to quantify; and the "beginner hits a wall where they can't burn more calories per minute" happens much sooner, because a lot of the inefficient things that burn calories on a machine will make them swim from a boat.
But I'm way off topic.0 -
There's no such thing as shocking your body into calorie burning.3
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Wow....SO much to comment on here. Glad others have chimed in. I'll echo the comments about no such thing as "shocking your body" and also that weight loss is best achieved through your dietary changes.
OP, with the above in mind, I'll offer my two cents as someone who has done a fair bit of bike/run combo work.
My first question is: What are you trying to accomplish beyond losing weight?? If you are simply trying to build endurance, then my suggestion is to follow a plan. Take a look at the resource suggested by @sjomial above. I'd also suggest looking at one of Matt Fitzgerald's free online triathlon training plans. I'm sure you could modify it to suit your needs. He may even have some duathlon plans. (run/bike/run)
Regarding the actual bike/run work: My first impression is that you're making it complicated for no good benefit. Simply doing one or two transitions should be sufficient, unless you just like the frequent changes. (Transition = bike to run, or run to bike). Secondly, if you want to build endurance, I'd focus on lower intensity sessions and follow a plan that uses "periodization" to help you build mileage over time while allowing your body to recover. Think of doing 80% of your workouts at low/moderate intensity, with only 20% at higher level intensity. Regarding muscle/joint impacts, most duathletes/triathletes find that going from bike to run is a challenge at first, since you've been in hip flexion while on the bike, then need to move to hip extension while running. The feeling of having "heavy legs" for the first few minutes of a run off the bike is unsettling to most athletes but lessens over time and with practice.
Also, since my focus is triathlon, all of my bike/run workouts have been done with a "bike focus" - meaning that I'm targeting the bike session as the key element of the workout, with the goal of the "transition run" being simply to get practice in moving from the bike to the run split, as opposed to building run endurance. ( I build run endurance on my long run days.) My long work is prescribed by time as opposed to distance. So, for example, a typical early season bike run session might be 2.5 hr bike, followed by a 20 minute easy transition run. Over the training period, the bike and run times would build in both duration and intensity, with recovery weeks built into the plan. At the peak, the split would be something like a 6-7hour bike/90 minute run in preparation for an IM distance race.
A final suggestion would be to learn a bit about fueling and nutrition as you start to do long workouts. Taking in fuel during the session is key for the majority of endurance athletes (fat adapted athletes being a slightly different story here). Good luck.
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Seconding the recommendation to follow either a Duathlon training plan or you could use a Triathlon training plan and just not do the swim sessions, you could choose to follow a half-Ironman plan which trains you for a 56mile ride to be followed by a 13.1 mile run. There’s so many free versions online to choose from, you can find one that you like the look of most.1
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TavistockToad wrote: »The issue with using exercise to create your deficit is, what happens when you're injured or life happens and you can't do that level of exercise?
Look at your food intake for your deficit, and exercise for fitness or enjoyment.
These seem to the reasons that people regain what they have lost. You see it every day on here and is one of the lessons from others that I remind myself of frequently.
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Thanks for all the input, some really interesting points made. I am currently eating around 2100 cals a day so I'm in deficit all the time, not relying on the exercise to burn fat at all. My goal is to be running 10 miles and cycling 20 once a week because I've already been at a stage in my life where I could run ten+ miles three times a week if I wanted but I was neglecting the cycling which I probably prefer. Its just that it takes up so much more time which ive not got nowadays. Will check out duathlon training plans, i'm sure there must be something out there that suits.
It was the extension/flexion change that I was wondering about being damaging or beneficial. I really enjoy the feeling of switching from one to another which is another reason I wanted to give it a try.2 -
TavistockToad wrote: »The issue with using exercise to create your deficit is, what happens when you're injured or life happens and you can't do that level of exercise?
My appetite went down, probably because I stopped exercising. It really wasn't any great hardship.0 -
Thanks for all the input, some really interesting points made. I am currently eating around 2100 cals a day so I'm in deficit all the time, not relying on the exercise to burn fat at all. My goal is to be running 10 miles and cycling 20 once a week because I've already been at a stage in my life where I could run ten+ miles three times a week if I wanted but I was neglecting the cycling which I probably prefer. Its just that it takes up so much more time which ive not got nowadays. Will check out duathlon training plans, i'm sure there must be something out there that suits.
It was the extension/flexion change that I was wondering about being damaging or beneficial. I really enjoy the feeling of switching from one to another which is another reason I wanted to give it a try.
Why only cycling 20 miles?
Last summer, I was training for a 10K (kilometres, of course), so I would run 7 km and then cycle 40 km. The next day I might cycle anywhere from 60 to 100 km. Then some shorter runs and rides during the week. The next weekend, I'd do 8 km and then go out and cycle a hilly 30 km. The next day I might cycle somewhere between 60 and 100 km. The next weekend, I might do a 9 km run, cycle a hilly 40 km, then cycle 125 km the next day, and so on.
But I don't think I'd like switching back and forth between the two very much. Too much time changing clothes.
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NorthCascades wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »The issue with using exercise to create your deficit is, what happens when you're injured or life happens and you can't do that level of exercise?
My appetite went down, probably because I stopped exercising. It really wasn't any great hardship.
This!
I've spent a lot of time exercising, and lost weight doing that ... and then something has happened where I haven't been able to exercise as much, and I cut back on my eating.
Once, I burnt my left foot to the bone, and couldn't walk, stand or anything for 5 weeks. I thought I might gain weight, and kind of braced myself for that. But I lost weight.0 -
Thanks for all the input, some really interesting points made. I am currently eating around 2100 cals a day so I'm in deficit all the time, not relying on the exercise to burn fat at all. My goal is to be running 10 miles and cycling 20 once a week because I've already been at a stage in my life where I could run ten+ miles three times a week if I wanted but I was neglecting the cycling which I probably prefer. Its just that it takes up so much more time which ive not got nowadays. Will check out duathlon training plans, i'm sure there must be something out there that suits.
It was the extension/flexion change that I was wondering about being damaging or beneficial. I really enjoy the feeling of switching from one to another which is another reason I wanted to give it a try.
Why only cycling 20 miles?
Last summer, I was training for a 10K (kilometres, of course), so I would run 7 km and then cycle 40 km. The next day I might cycle anywhere from 60 to 100 km. Then some shorter runs and rides during the week. The next weekend, I'd do 8 km and then go out and cycle a hilly 30 km. The next day I might cycle somewhere between 60 and 100 km. The next weekend, I might do a 9 km run, cycle a hilly 40 km, then cycle 125 km the next day, and so on.
But I don't think I'd like switching back and forth between the two very much. Too much time changing clothes.
Time really. I've got a 2 year old kid and taking 4, 5 or 6 hours out of days is pretty much impossible. I'm lucky if I can get 3 hrs to train!0 -
Of course once you start getting the miles high your body demands more fuel which is one reason why you can't count on exercise to lose weight.
So true, when I was training for a marathon, I gained half a stone. I was running 30 miles over the week on top of other training (cycling and gym), I was so hungry and my body was so tired I had to increase my food intake to keep up with the training plan, but then on top of that I gave in to the "rungry" over ate and gained weight whilst training
I now know, when I am losing weight, I need to focus on what I am eating first and do exercise for fun
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Maybe losing weight with exercise just works for some people and not others. Some people seem really adamant that it just doesn't work, even in spite of all the people who do it long term.2
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