Jumbo Visma: Almost all riders are running during the winter

Why? Are you saying is too much or too little?

Seems like a good place to start if you are a trained endurance athlete.

I believe that the follow-up quote from the OP of “About half that totally wrecked me” is your answer. :blush:

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Trained runner? If not you either have superior soft tissues (tendons, etc) or you need to slowly build that up in your body, and do it over a longer timeframe.

Using a 3:2:1 / BarryP regimen, 13 miles a week works out to:

  • 3 - 1.3 mile runs
  • 2 - 2.6 mile runs
  • 1 - 3.9 mile run

The 3.9 mile run is probably a bit of a stretch for anyone just starting a running program.

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I don’t know whether the headline numbers on running injury risk are the most relevant metric for cycling.

n=1, so take it for what you will… I run more than I bike and I do get injured a couple of times a year. Those injuries generally prevent me from running for a week or two, but don’t interfere at all with biking. They’re all “injuries”, but not all are equal. the only running injury that’s sidelined me from riding for a few weeks was a severe adductor strain. Most of the time it’s some tendon strain when running which doesn’t show up when I’m clipped in and the bike frame’s bearing my weight. It’s hard to overstate just how much gentler cycling is on your joints than running - even all-out sprints.

Also, the ranges on that article are wonderfully precise :slight_smile:
“From the epidemiological studies it can be concluded that running injuries lead to a reduction of training or training cessation in about 30 to 90% of all injuries, about 20 to 70% of all injuries lead to medical consultation or medical treatment.”

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11 miles is an average of about 1.5 miles per day. If you do one 11 mile run, yes… than too much. If you run it too fast… yes, too much. But if you break it down practically and start slow than you should not have any problem. Additionally, I have heard on recent podcasts when discussing running they recommended to even take a walking breaks. So even if you stretch your runs to 2 miles (lets say 20 minutes for a beginner) and you take a walking break every 3-5 minutes a trained cyclist should be able to do this no problem. In fact 20 min of walk/jog is not a bad place to start for someone sedentary and off the couch.

Some of them, Wout especially, do cyclocross in the winter and running fast is still very important if you want to be at the top.

That doesn’t inherently explain why others who have no cyclocross program would be running, but one possible explanation is that there are some percentage of riders deliberately running as part of their training and they are expounding the virtues of it to the rest of the team. Also J-V is Dutch and cyclocross culture is part of Dutch DNA.

Team JV have incorporated run training because it’s good for you as long as you don’t go too far and too fast. If all you do for exercise is ride a bicycle it is a recipe for weak bones, poor posture and muscle imbalances.

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I ride 10 hr a week. If I tried running 10 miles in a week I’d have trouble walking for a season…

Hoping the competition will believe it, do it, then get injured. I mean, why not make up crazy stuff?

Joe

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If you follow Wout on Strava, he runs quite a bit during the winter. And he still does a little run training, here and there, in the spring and summer.

I was listening to a German coach in the VLAmax camp a while back on a podcast and he said that he prescribes running to raise VO2max in the winter after a long season of endurance training that lowers VLAmax.

So maybe this is part of their protocol? (Leaving aside the validity of VLAmax in the first place.)

I don’t think they actually have a protocol that prescribes running. More that they encourage different types of cross training, and running is one option. If anyone wants the actual context, this came from the latest episode (as of writing) of the Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast where LR interviews the J-V Head of Performance.

In that podcast he describes some of the ways that training has changed int he last decade and he cited shorter off seasons and more emphasis on strength and cross training among other things. Running was cited as one of the forms of cross training, but he deliberately stated that they are very cautious in terms of starting people off slow, running on soft surfaces only, and other deliberate care to ensure people don’t get injured.

I don’t think it’s rocket science, they take a year-round holistic approach to training and use cross training during the off season, but under the careful eye of their performance staff.

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So your saying running a couple months in the off season improves bone density for the rest of the year? Not sure it works like that

I agree…somebody would have to show me some real data. :smiley: A more likely hypothesis is that running in the off season acts to slow bone loss throughout the full season.

It seems like increasing bone density would be extremely counterproductive if you’re trying to be a grand tour cyclist…

Until you have an innocuous crash and break your hip…

To finish first, first you must finish, and a fair degree of robustness is needed to finish any grand tour.

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How many riders have left the tour with a broken hip? Is that actually a thing?

Tao G-H in this year’s Giro…

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Absolutely….Gerraint Thomas (who also broke his pelvis at the Giro), Michael Valgren, and many others.

Not to mention Remco at the Tour of Lombardia a few years ago.

While not “common” perhaps, it is definitely not “rare”.

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