How To Use Cycling To Improve Your Trail Running

For most of my running career, I’ve just about always used cycling as a cross-training method and it is most certainly helped me to improve my running way more than I otherwise would have been able to.

Cycling is a relatively low impact activity, so is an excellent choice for cross-training when you want to safely increase training volume. If you run immediately after a long bike ride you can simulate running on tired legs similar to the final miles of a race, with less impact and faster recovery.

Let’s take a closer look at exactly how you can use cycling to improve your trail running.

Cycling For Cross-Training

One of the primary ways to use cycling to improve your trail running is when you use cycling as a cross-training method.

By this, I mean that when you are cycling you are using the same cardiovascular system that you would need for trail running but you doing it in a manner that is a way lower impact on your body. This means that you’re able to boost your running fitness without negatively impacting the joints and ligaments that you need to be able to run.

I find that on days when my body is still stiff and sore from a high-intensity training session or a really long run, I’m able to get on the bike and spin my legs out and use the cycling as a kind of active recovery. This helps me train more days a week than I would have been able to do by just running alone.

Cycling To Explore Potential New Routes

One of the great things that I love about heading out on my mountain bike is it gives me the opportunity to explore new potential trails that I can use for running. For instance, instead of running 5 miles up a trail only to find that it’s a dead-end and have to run all the way back, retracing my steps, what I can do instead is do that same exploring on the mountain bike. That way, if I do end up at a dead-end after doing five miles along the trail it’s not nearly as tough to double back and go off exploring another new trail.

When I get back from a mountain bike ride and have been able to discover a new trail that I can link together as a loop, I will then save that trail to my GPS watch and keep that in reserve for when I next want to do a long trail run along a new route.

By using cycling to explore new routes I’m able to expand my network of potential routes for running far more quickly than what I would be able to do had I been doing just trail running.

Using Cycling To Increase Training Volume

Cycling is a great way to increase my training volume. When I’m building up to a new distance for trail running I obviously need to increase my training volume.

We all know that when it comes to running it’s never a good idea to increase your overall running volume by more than 10% per week without risking injury. If you want to increase your weekly training volume beyond that 10% figure then it is a good idea to use cycling for all those additional hours of cardio training that you need to do.

I have found that when I’m stepping up to a new distance and I’ve put a lot of the training volume in on the bike I can actually run slightly fewer miles each week and yet still have an increased overall training load.

Cycling During Injury Rehabilitation To Maintain Fitness

As a runner, I hate getting injured. It feels like it knocks me all the way back to square one in my fitness. However, running on the trails sometimes an injury is unavoidable. For example, tripping over a rock or root can land you up with a slightly worse than just being bruised and bloody.

During the weeks when your body is healing up from the injury to the point where you can once again cope with the demands of running, you can use cycling as a way to maintain your cardiovascular fitness. Finding a way to stay fit while your body is recovering from the injury not only helps you cope with the frustration of being injured but may even help you recover faster to the point where you can resume training.

For instance, a couple of years ago I got a serious knee tendon injury (from a completely non-running-related sport) that put me out of running for 18-months. If I had not been able to continue with cycling as a way of maintaining my fitness I would have been completely back to square one and it would have taken me ages to rebuild my fitness to a level where I could once again start running with relative comfort.

Now that I have more or less recovered from that injury I’m able to restart my running training at a  way higher level than what I would have been able to do had I not been cycling for the last year-and-a-half.

Using Cycling To Step Up To New Distances

As I mentioned earlier, cycling is a great way of stepping up to a new race distance.

For instance, if you regularly run 10km races and you want to step up to a half marathon, then use cycling as a way of increasing your training volume at the beginning of the training block. That way you’ll be able to step up to that half marathon distance way more quickly than you otherwise would have been able to.

The same goes for stepping up from a half marathon distance up to a full marathon or for that matter up to an ultra-marathon.

Using A Brick Workout To Simulate Running On Tired Legs

One of the things that triathlon training taught me was the very uncomfortable but highly effective brick workout which teaches you to cope with the feeling of running on tired legs.

As a trail runner, the normal way I used to train what it is like to run on tired legs would be during my long run. The final 5 miles of a 20+ mile training run would be the part where I could simulate the feelings of running on tired legs near the end of a race. However, those kinds of long runs normally need a day or two of recovery before I can ramp up my training again.

A brick workout is a workout where you combine different sporting activities together into a single workout. The type of brick workout that is most effective for trail running, or for that matter road running, will be the bike/run brick workout.

The way this works is you go out on the bike and you do approximately one to two hours on the bike at a relatively high intensity. The goal here is to finish the bike ride with as much fatigue in your legs as possible. As soon as you get back from the bike ride, use as little time as possible to put your bike away change into your running shoes head out the door for a 30-minute run. From the very first steps of the run, you will already feel the heaviness in your legs that you get at the end of a really long run.

This allows you to train on tired legs but without needing to put in the vast number of running miles to get your legs to that degree of fatigue. This means that you get the training benefits of running on tired legs without the additional impact of all the miles of running to get your legs to that level of fatigue.

The benefit here is faster recovery so you can be back to full training the very next day. It is almost like being able to do multiple long runs each week without the added injury risk.

Types Of Cycling That Benefit Runners

There are various types of cycling that are beneficial to trail runners. I find that the most beneficial types of cycling for me as a trail runner are mountain biking and gravel biking. These two forms of cycling put me in the same type of environment as I would be if I was running.

The main reason that I am a trail runner is that I enjoy being on the trails. A gravel bike or a mountain bike lets me get out on most of the same trails.

The next type of cycling that is beneficial as far as your trail running is considered would be road cycling. When I go out on the road bike I will look for routes where I can have as much elevation gain as possible. The idea is to get do a hill workout without smashing my quads to pieces running downhill.

The last type of cycling that I’ll mention is indoor cycling where you’re either on a stationary bike or you take your outside bike and mount it onto some type of indoor trainer. This is my least favorite type of cycling as I’m stuck inside rather than being out in nature. However, when I was just starting the rehabilitation of my knee injury it was the only type of cycling that I could safely do.