Cycling, Running or both

Cycling is an awesome sport, I’m just discovering that or should I say rediscovering. Running too is a great exercise and I can fully attest to that seeing that I have been doing it consistently for the last five years. I do however have to say that as far as the latter is concerned, at least from my experience, there will come a time when you’ll feel that you just need a break.  So a few weeks ago I was contemplating doing just that and replacing it with cycling. My argument was that these two sports used pretty much the same group of muscles and so it was possible for one to replace the other.

Now it is worth noting that one of the main reasons why people feel like they need a break from running is because the sport tends to cause injuries especially if you don’t get enough rest between runs among other things; I had come to this point. My patellar tendons were always in pain and I was really beginning to have second thoughts about running.

Enter cycling; as I said last week, I bought a bike not too long ago and so I can’t really claim to be anything close to an expert cyclist. What I can confidently say however is that cycling was exactly what I needed to get out of my fitness plateau. Here’s what happened; this last Friday, I decided to go for my normal run after having taken a two-week break. Two weeks before I remember very well having run about 7 KM and this had been the case for quite a while. During my two-week break, I had cycled approximately 110 KM with quite a number of hills in there. So last Friday when I decided to go for my run I was able to do 9.2KM and I have to say at the end I was feeling much stronger than I usually did after finishing those 7k runs.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that cycling was what did the trick. In fact I could have run even further had it not been for the fact that I was constrained of time. And I am not exaggerating here; those few weeks I have been cycling have really done wonders for my knee. The pain has significantly subsided and boy oh boy do I feel great.

So if you are wondering whether to take up cycling or running; my advice is simple, go for both; you simply won’t regret it. Cycling will improve your running and vice versa. Over the next few weeks, God willing, I plan to really kick things up a notch as far as both sports are concerned as I prepare for the Nairobi marathon in October.