Tell us you don't cycle without telling us you don't cycle. Do you also think skinny little runners could be elite swimmers if they had dedicated their life to it because they're both aerobic sports?
Also pretty sure cycling burns more calories.
Obviously not, swimmers have very different body types (tall and muscular). Top cyclists are also skinny and little, albeit with more leg muscle.
Running is higher intensity and burns more calories.
Not sure why this is getting so much hate, it’s an interesting thought experiment. Running is objectively harder than cycling (burns more calories, full body weight), so I think Kipchoge would do better crossing over to cycling than Armstrong did in a marathon. However, even peak Kipchoge would probably need 1-2 years of dedicated training to be relevant in the Tour, because his legs wouldn’t be ready for a 3 week GT off of nothing.
Said differently, I think Kipchoge, Bekele, Halie, Jakob etc could probably be Tour winners if they had dedicated their lives to it. I’m not sure Pogacar would be Oly champion in the marathon even if he dedicated his life to it.
Debating which sport / discipline is harder or easier is stupid. ALL sports are EQUALLY difficult - by definition. If you are NOT the world record holder / gold medalist, then TRY HARDER until you ARE.
There are very few people who can declare a sport/discipline 'easy': the person who wins a global championship while setting a world record.
For example, the only man on planet earth who can claim the 800m is 'easy' is David Rudisha. No other man in history can make that claim. If any man other than David Rudisha says "the 800m is easy" then I ask "if the 800m is so 'easy', why aren't you the world record holder / gold medalist?"
There are a few other examples... Usain... Mondo... Wayde... everyone else should STFU and try harder.
Said differently, I think Kipchoge, Bekele, Halie, Jakob etc could probably be Tour winners if they had dedicated their lives to it. I’m not sure Pogacar would be Oly champion in the marathon even if he dedicated his life to it.
While there is no doubt that these guys could be elite climbers if they trained for cycling...
Sans Ingebrigtsen, none of these guys could touch the top time trialists who have 6.5 liter VO2 max levels.
Ingebrigtsen is intriguing because he is the right size to be good at both climbing and time trialing. However, the fact that he is also a fast sprinter (for a distance runner) may not give him any advantage in cycling like it does in running.
But there is a reason that most tour champions are around 150 lbs and not 120 lbs.
This post was edited 39 seconds after it was posted.
Not sure if youve noticed, but the same guys winning the mountain stages are often winning the TT's these days. In 2023, Jonas and Pogi beat Wout (TT specialist) and went 1/2 in the the Stage 16 TT - same guys who won mountain stages. This goes back to my prior point that grand tour cycling requires a much more diverse "power curve" vs running. These guys can attack in the mountains, and win a TT.
What does burning more calories have to with intensity? hard is hard! in other words, the real reason runners weigh less, is not due to training, but due to how much they do/dont eat. As we know, weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Running burns more calories per minute than cycling but you can cycle longer - burning more than you could running.
Tell us you don't cycle without telling us you don't cycle. Do you also think skinny little runners could be elite swimmers if they had dedicated their life to it because they're both aerobic sports?
Also pretty sure cycling burns more calories.
Obviously not, swimmers have very different body types (tall and muscular). Top cyclists are also skinny and little, albeit with more leg muscle.
Running is higher intensity and burns more calories.
Ehhh, depends on your power output. Tall and skinny has absolutely nothing to do with it.
If you can average 277 watts an hour, you'll burn 1000 kJ, or roughly 1000 calories an hour. Decent amateurs (cat 1-2s, maybe some 3s) can do that for 2-3 hours.
Now this isn't your typical tour stage effort, but to give you a real life example, Derek Gee averaged 324 watts for 4.5 hours in the break away yesterday.
That was 5,355 kJ, or about 5,300 calories. In 4.5 hours. On the seventh day of the tour...
kipchoge does quite a bit of cycling so this question isn't as stupid as it sounds. but obviously he would finish last by a long way. completely different muscles used, you need big quads and they are less used in running except for downhills. we know that kipchoge struggles with hills in running anyway.
his best chance to win would be to engineer a crash in the peloton. the same as he did for kiptum.
what? too soon?
It’s a myth that at 5’6” 115lbs, and with very muscular legs, Kipchoge can’t climb hills with the best. For whatever reason, he had a bad day at Boston. Walmsley sucked on the hills in Atlanta, but he’s still a great climber. What other elite runner is about 5 minutes slower in Boston compared to other majors?
His twig-like arms and legs would snap in half by mile 10 of stage 1.
No, but it might happen during a 50-60mph descent down a winding road. The only way he would survive would be to pullover and walk his bike.
If you’ve got Netflix, there’s an episode of their Tour de France docuseries where they show Tom Pidcock descending down the backside of Alpe d’Huez. It’s beautiful and terrifying and has guys in other team cars in total awe of his bike handling skills at high speed.
Bini Girmay has been a World Tour rider for enough years now to be an adequate descender and he’ll still lose a couple minutes on a long descend to a rider like Pidcock.
And death is literally an option; they had a pro rider die on a descent in the Tour of Austria over the weekend.
Divide the amount of kJs by 4.184 then divide by .25. Calories burned cycling are dependent on your Gross Metabolic Efficiency, but for most people, it’s between 20-25%. That means for every Calorie you burn produces around 1.045 kilojoules. For practical reasons, most cyclists approximate 1 kJ is equal to 1 Calorie.""
Kipchoge is an aerobic monster. How would he fare if he competed in the Tour de France? Given his light bodyweight, could he keep up with the best climbers like Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel on the mountain stages?
time trial biking is all about watts. Chris boardman Height1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Weight70 kg (154 lb)
Set UCI world hour record with about 450 watts. This is a stocky build compared to say mo farah at the same height is 128lb
Hour record is on the flats, so he’s stocky compared to a top level climber, who will frequently be about 130lbs at 5’8.
116 and 5’8 is the point where you risk having issues when the crosswinds come up or during individual time trials- you do need a certain amount of weight to keep the bike in place as you pedal for those kinds of scenarios.
