Runners and Cyclists Are Different Animals

Logistics attract and reward separate personality types.

Stacey was a Category 3 cyclist when we met. I explained to my running buddies that this was akin to being a 35:30 women’s 10K runner (at a time when the U.S. record was 31:19)¹. I got that bit of comparative info from my derriere, which is also the source of the rest of this post. Enjoy!

I assumed Stacey’s approach to cycling (and, by extension, that of her teammates) would be nearly identical to my and my cohort’s approach to running. I quickly realized I was wrong.

A runner returning from foot surgery pretends to be a cyclist. (One who requires toe cages and often puts his helmet on backwards.)

The reason is rooted in logistics: You can basically run every day no matter where you are in the world. You can run from and in airports; you can do loops around a parking lot when your motel is hemmed in on all sides by impassable roads; you can run at 3 a.m. or 11 p.m.; you can run in heat waves and blizzards and weekly storms of the century; you can do like Haile Gebreselasie once did and run up and down your hotel corridor. And if one day you inexplicably find yourself at your sister’s house without your running gear at what will be your only time to run that day, you can borrow a pair of her tennis shorts and run 6 miles barefoot on asphalt.

Whereas cycling….There’s darkness and weather and road conditions and time constraints and mechanical issues and other factors that legitimately challenge even the most dedicated velocipedist. And that’s when they’re at home! Maybe there are cyclists who tote a folded-up commuter bike in their carry-on luggage, but you get my point. Riding every day no matter where you are is borderline impossible even if you live monastically in service of your avocation.

The upside is that running attracts and rewards obsessive personality types more than cycling does. If you can run every day, then you should, goes what to some of us is the obvious conclusion. Where and when to run each day therefore becomes a primary element of planning one’s life. Some of us find that attractive; Camus famously wrote that Sisyphus found meaning in pushing the stone up the hill every day.

Also attractive—here’s where an obsessive bent is rewarded—is a theoretical clear line between one’s efforts and outcomes. I smiled in recognition when I heard three-time Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein talk about throwing a baseball against a wall for two hours a day during his pre-running childhood.

Put another way, if 10 miles is good, 12 is better. Yes, people get injured from doing too much too soon too hard. And yes, there’s the law of diminishing returns. But they’re still returns! More is better remains true up to a point that few of us have ever been at risk of running past. I’ve had several Runner’s World colleagues who have said some version of, “High mileage doesn’t work for me,” by which they have usually meant they got tired or sore during a 50-mile week years ago.

Cyclists tend to be more laissez-faire than the breed of runners I’m talking about here. It simply won’t do to regularly be thwarted by the many barriers to daily riding listed above. Better to accept that’s the reality, in which case one has reason to learn how to temper obsessiveness, or the ideal—simply not be an obsessive sort to start with.

Runners and Cyclists at a Party

My dimestore psychologizing on this theme was reinforced when, early in Stacey’s and my relationship, we started going to parties together. After one runner-dominated one, Stacey said, “Your and your friends sure do like to drink.” Of course we did! If it’s a night to drink, then drink—if one beer is good, five is better.²

Drinking at cyclist-dominated parties was different. I noticed that Stacey and her comrades would just leave one-third-full drinks on a table or bookshelf and walk into another room. They didn’t need to drain their glasses or always have a glass in hand. As with riding on a given day, they could take it or leave it. It’s doubtful that any of these people claim as a lifetime achievement getting cut off at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, as a running friend and I do.

These parties coincided with Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France reign. One thing that Armstrong attributed his success to was year-round training. This was initially confusing. But it was indeed the case that some of his competitors were like, “Wait, what? You’re training through the winter?!” It was as if Armstrong had broken some gentlemen’s agreement. “Doping? Yeah, that’s fine. But training hard year-round? That’s an offense to the spirit of the sport.” Perhaps it’s not surprising that Armstrong later went through a marathoning phase.

As part of their less obsessive relationship with their sport, it seems like cyclists are much more well-rounded athletically than obsessive runners. They eagerly do things like Nordic ski and rock climb and swim and paddle and trail run and backpack and on and (annoyingly) on. It’s possible that, overall, they’re happier people than obsessive runners because they have more sources of healthful pleasure and satisfaction.³

My takeaway: Get a runner as your attorney and accountant, and a cyclist as your spouse.

1. Set by Lynn Jennings, who many years later was a surprise guest accompanying Bernd Heinrich to my 50th birthday party. But that’s a story for another day.

2. To be clear, I’m not positing this approach as desirable. I’m just explaining how some of us think. (Footnote to footnote: I no longer drink. True to having obsessive tendencies, it’s better for me to never do so rather than try to do so moderately.)

3. Perhaps the closest running cohort to cyclists are ultrarunners, who frequently do things like a couple of 5-milers during the workweek and then an all-day outing over the weekend, and who often are similarly nonchalant about switching to an alternative activity for weeks or months at a time.