Brent Kearney

This summer I splurged and bought a mountain bike, having endured three years of expressions of disbelief and disapproval from my peers here in Banff. Now I can’t believe that I waited so long to get one — its an awesome sport. It offers an exceptionally fun way to train for fitness and competition, with lung-busting, heart-pounding climbs and hours of leg-burning endurance rides.

The more I bike, though, the less that I run, and I think that there is a price to pay if you’re competing in running races. After my last trail running race, I was sore for days. I think that mountain biking is great training for mountain running, but it lacks the low-grade impact damage that you get from running, which means that race day is going to hurt a lot more when it comes around.

So why not combine the two? That way you get the thrill of mountain biking and don’t miss the conditioning that comes with running. Yesterday I gave it a try, and loved it. I took a 10k trail ride to a spot that had a 6k loop, which I ran. I cabled my bike to a tree, and continued on foot. The 6k loop was on a steep horse trail with a 750m elevation gain over rough terrain that would have been impossible to bike anyways. It was a great workout, and I was surprised at how good my legs felt after going from one motion to the other. When I started off running, it felt a bit like I was floating, and I was moving much slower than my normal pace. After a few minutes though, my pace picked up, and the new activity felt like a nice break from pedaling hard.

Switching back to biking after the run was similar – I started out slowly, but within a few minutes, I was back to pedaling normally, and it felt like a nice break from running. I’m guessing that the “rest” feeling is because lactic acid builds up in different areas of muscle during the different activities. So when running engages different muscle groups, it allows toxins to clear where they had built-up during pedaling, then vice-versa when switching from running back to pedaling.

Now I’m really looking forward to competing in an off-road duathlon! Although the ones that I’ve read about have a running-biking-running format instead of the way I did it. I’ll find out soon whether that makes a difference as far as endurance and pain is concerned. :)