Can Cycling Make Me A Better Runner? | GTN Coach's Corner

Welcome back to another Coach's Corner. We have a wonderful array of six questions to go through today. Starting with the question about protein and creatine supplementation. We have another one about fasted training. How to use cycling to help your running. A question about using early season aero bars. Whether to self-coach or hire a coach. And an ambitious 14-year-old with an interesting question. Very ambitious 14-year-old. Starting with Edwin Rager. He says, Happy New Year, GTN. A little bit late. It probably took a while to get to this question. I'm currently eight weeks away from my first marathon as a way to prepare for my first full Ironman in November. I'm training six days a week plus four days of strength training. Currently using creatine and protein to help my performance. I used to do fasted training sessions for my normal triathlon training. I recently started experimenting with doing long runs fasted as well. My question is, should I drink my protein immediately after the session? How about creatine? Is it better to do strength training after eating something? Thanks and greetings from Colombia. Okay, quite a few questions there all at once. Let's try and answer them. First, protein after the session. That's a big yes. You should be getting protein in after the session. In fact, you need to use that glycogen window to get your recovery going immediately after training. That means taking protein and carbs in. Now, depending on what session you've done, you could go more towards protein and less towards carbs or more towards carbs and less towards protein depending on whether it's an endurance session and you've drained all your glycogen stores or whether it's a really long session or a really hard session where you've actually done some muscle damage and you need to repair those muscles. Either way, you're going to have a lot more carbs than protein in that recovery generally. Generally, you would say if you've done something hard, you've done some muscle damage, a three to one carb to protein ratio, so three parts carb to one part protein. If you've done something more endurance related, you've drained that glycogen stores and you just want to recover from that and top up those stores, then more a four to one carb to protein ratio will get your body recovering as quickly as possible after that session and get you back out there for another session. Still though, not all protein, some carbs in there regardless of what you've done if you want to get that recovery going. I hope that answers the first question. Yes, I think so. It doesn't necessarily have to be a drink with that specific ratio. You can also use full food. I guess it depends a little bit of weather or how well you feel. If you're doing a long-run training marathon, make sure you're having carbs during as well as it will just help as well as doing the session well, but it helps actually kickstart that recovery. There's quite a few things to bear in mind there. Your second question on creatine is a little specific and unusual for endurance athletes, I suppose. It's been labeled as a supplement that's designed more for those who are going to be doing explosive work because that's when your body utilizes that creatine. All right. The jury is actually a little bit out on creatine for endurance athletes. Now, creatine is something, as Heather says, that you use for explosive sport, which we don't really do as endurance athletes. Although, you do do high-intensity sessions and it has been shown that you can do those high-intensity sessions better. You can do more reps of high-intensity if you have taken creatine supplementation, but do you really need it for endurance athletes? Do you really need to go to that extra rep, that extra set where you're doing a little bit harder? No one really knows the answer to that. Some people swear by it and say, yes, it definitely makes a difference. You recruit more fibers, you're therefore going to get those benefits. When it comes to endurance, you can have more fibers that you can actually recruit for the endurance, and therefore, you should be taking creatine. Creatine also does cause water retention and some weight gain, and that's obviously very negative for endurance performance. Actually, we're going to put a link down below to a recent study. It was a study review, really, of a whole bunch of studies, and they actually found that it doesn't make that much difference to endurance athletes, one way or the other, across a whole bunch of studies, and that supplementing with creatine, you can take it or leave it. It's not going to make that much difference. It may help with that muscle recruitment and therefore, the muscle development, but often, that's offset by the weight gain, and therefore, creatine supplement for endurance athletes is not something that's going to make a big difference to your endurance performance in a race. Potentially, it may make a little bit of difference to your actual health and fitness because it allows you to train more regularly, more consistently, and do those high-intensity sessions more often, but it's not actually going to improve endurance performance. Heather Fellowes, I guess it depends on how much emphasis you've got on those strength sessions that you're doing as well. Then the final part of your question around fasted training, well, Mark and James had an interesting debate on that topic a while ago, so we'll share that video link for you. Basically, if you are trying to train longer and allow your body to be in a state where it can really optimize that training, it does need to be fueled. The debate can go on, and if you are going for fasted training, then your body is not being trained to use those carbohydrates, but when come race day, I presume you are going to be wanting to take on carbohydrate beforehand and during because that's going to get you your best performance. It is a little bit debated of whether there are any positive effects for using that in your training. James Ruhfus, Yeah, a bit too long to go into again here. As we say, Mark and I did do a debate, so after this video, go click that link and you can watch that debate on fasted training. It has benefits and negatives, so probably worth investigating more before you just jump straight into doing all your training fasted. Okay, next question is from Matt Cagnini. It says, this is a bad idea to fuel with carbs during every session. Am I limiting my body's ability to fat as a fuel source and teaching my body to rely too much on the intra-workout carbs? Oh, it's basically the same question. We're going to point you to the same video where Mark and I just debated exactly that. No, is the short answer. You're not training your body to be too reliant on carbs. Your body is always going to be reliant on carbs. That is how our bodies work. Yes, you can become better fat-adapted and you can get through long endurance sessions with no carbs fasted. Come race day, if you want to hit that peak performance and you want to go as fast as possible, you are going to have to rely on carbs. Getting your body better at utilizing those and better at absorbing those is no bad thing. It's something that if you're going to go for high performance in your sport, in endurance sport, you need to be really good at absorbing and utilizing carbs. Training in pretty much every session is not a bad thing. However, like I said, there's a bit more to unpack than just that. Head over to that debate that Mark and I had, and I'm sure you'll find it quite enlightening. Yes, there definitely is, but we can't go there now. Moving on to a question from showme__brat says, hello, guys. Happy New Year again. My questions are, how can cycling complement running training in the best way? Which running sessions can be replaced with cycling simply due to lack of time to train? My first race in this year will be a marathon followed by a couple of triathlons. Is there any way to train running really hard while maintaining a good cycling form? Again, there's quite a lot going on there. Cycling does actually complement running really well. It does actually make you a better runner or can make you a better runner if you use it correctly. The other way around, actually not so much. Running doesn't actually make you that much stronger for cycling, surprisingly maybe. Cycling is aerobic and it's low weight-bearing, which means you can do the aerobic training, which you will use the aerobic fitness for when it comes to doing your run sessions, without adding more strain, more impact to your week. That's obviously the limiting factor. Often, the limiting factor when you are building up your run mileage is how much impact your body, your bones, your muscles, your ligaments can handle during the week. You can get more aerobic training in by doing a few cycles. Therefore, I'd suggest that if you want to bring cycling in to your running or keep cycling if you're going to build up your running, swap the easy runs for easy cycles. You can increase the duration. If you're going to do a 30-minute easy run, you could do a full hour on the bike. You're getting that aerobic benefit, but without adding any impact to your week. Therefore, you can probably do your high intensity running better. You can do a little bit more of the high intensity running without adding that impact, without increasing the injury risk, but still getting the aerobic benefits of doing the cycling. If you want to stay super fit for both cycling and running though, that's a triathlon program. Those two are going to have to be very finely balanced in your week to get super fit for both. Sounds like that comes maybe later on in the season. Another point to make, if you are using your cycling for your recovery, don't just look at your heart rate as your marker because often lower cadence will keep your heart rate lower, but that will be actually using those muscles more than you want and it will make you feel heavier for cycling. Try and keep a nice high cadence and just keep an eye on your heart rate so you're not working too hard, but it's more of a spinning feel. It should feel super easy like your recovery run does and maybe even a bit easier. Your cycle and run heart rates are not the same. Your zones are not the same, so be aware of that. Don't go transfer your run zones onto your cycle and then go, well, I have to work so hard on the back to get into zone three that it's not worth doing. Your cycle zones are slightly different, so make sure you're aware of that. Moving on, we have Gerrit Schoene. Two questions again here. Number one, I'm currently training for my first middle distance race in September. Clip-on aero bars for my road bike, which were never properly fitted, but feeling relatively relaxed with them. Should I continue to ride with them to get used to the aero position or wait until April when I can get a bike fitted or even a proper tri bike? Am I seeing any benefits this early in the base block or doing actual harm to my position training? I think we'll answer this and then move on to the next one because the next question is pretty long too. Okay, well, you're unlikely to do any harm training early season in your aero bars. Worst case scenario, you may be not getting any gains from doing those aero bar training. If you did do your training on a road bike, you wouldn't be getting those gains in the aero position anyway. Worst case scenario, you're just not going to transfer that onto your time trial bike later on in the season, but you're definitely not hurting anything by training in your aero bars early season. I don't think it's a negative thing. I think you can definitely get used to it, but I would, well in advance of your race, get into your race setup position and make sure that you are comfortable and powerful in that race setup position and then you've got time to adapt to it, but you probably only need six to eight weeks to really get used to that aero position. Doing it in the off-season, not necessarily if you find it uncomfortable or if you're going to be using a different bike when it comes to race day. It sounds like April to September is going to be plenty of time for you to dial in that new position. Cool that you are getting a bike fit and like James says, just concentrate now on being comfortable and being able to get those base miles in. However that- I've been safe in winter, whatever bike is most safe on the slippery road. I've been getting to try bars this time of year, but that's- Okay, next question from Keratin. He says, I'm really lucky to have flexible full-time remote job, which means I can easily invest 15 to 25 hours a week for training. Whoa, nice. That's a luxury. The last few weeks I've found a sustainable routine with somewhat high volume, 13 to 18 hours, feeling really good. I have my first middle distance race, my second triathlon overall coming up in September. I was not able to find any good training plan that would fit into this routine always between 15 and 25 hours. Most are way below 15 hours here because most people have less than 15 hours a week. Should I continue my self-coached approach, polarized training with good recovery based on my own research? Should I get a training plan and add and modify sessions or should I spend money and get a coach even though it is my first real triathlon season? He is lucky indeed to have those problems. Our advice is always the same when it comes to this. The optimal way to get the optimal benefit out of yourself and get you prepared for the race is to get a coach. That's the only way you're going to perfectly get your training fitting around your life and perfectly get you ready for squeezing every ounce you can. If you do it yourself, if you try and figure it out and you don't have the knowledge, you're almost certainly going to leave some performance on the table come race day because you just didn't capitalize on a certain thing that you could have been working on in the gap. Or worse, you're going to overpush it, you're going to work too hard, and you're going to find yourself burned out or even worse, injured because you were just too desperate to fit in everything and use every single hour that was available to you. A coach is always the best answer, I think. Heather Fellman Yeah. If you are going for adapting a program, just be really cautious on that because obviously, if it's been designed for 15 hours, it will have the right ratio of everything. It doesn't mean you can just add an hour onto each session or something like that because that could end in disaster. You probably need a bit of advice if you're going to go down that route. Getting a coach doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go full whack and have that interaction all the time. You can actually get a coach to set you a program that's much cheaper than having a full-time coach with that feedback. Then you know that it's almost like following that program, but you know it's exactly right for the time that you've got available. Mark Threlfall Yeah. I'd be very reticent to just adapt a program. You can send yourself off on a whole cascade of bad recovery by throwing in a curveball of a session here or there. I would say get a coach or at least get a coach to write a specific program that works around your life. Okay, final question. Zuhair Khan, hashtag GTN Coaches Corner. I am a 14-year-old from Bangladesh and I've run three marathons. Okay. I finished all of them at around the five-hour mark and now recently quit running the marathon distance and I'm saving it for when I'm older. I have instead acquired a coach and I'm training mainly for the 5k and 10k distance with some half marathons here and there. The reason I decided to stop running marathons is because after speaking to some more experienced runners, they said I should be training for 5k to 10k because those distances are harder to become better at when I'm older. Other than that, they always gave a vague answer, you're just going to break your legs or your body isn't ready yet. When I told them I'd done a full marathon. Can you explain the finer details why someone, 14-year-olds, shouldn't be running 42 kilometers at once and what consequences they can face? Whoa. Okay. Yes. Heather Fellowes-I mean, that makes me shiver the thought that you are running that far and it probably sounds like the reaction that you've been having. Maybe they don't know the exact reason, but it is general knowledge that basically your bones are still growing. They're still developing. If you're putting that much strain through them over a long period of time, then you could actually be limiting their growth or changing their growth. You have growth plates within your bones that are not fully formed. It's the cartilage is still being laid down, your bones are still growing in length. You see the height of boys growing up until some boys can't grow until 19. On average, it's around 17 when these bones will actually stop growing and start to strengthen. That doesn't mean at 17, you start going to run marathons either because there's a lot more you can gain out of your running by aiming for those shorter distances like people are saying. It's great that you've got that network around you that people are actually pointing that out and not encouraging you. They're being supportive. Mark Threlfall-Yes, they're all being supportive. We love that you're enthusiastic about your running, but yes, as Heather says, until you're 17, maybe even 19, your muscles are attached to cartilage instead of bone at those growth plates. All kinds of things can go wrong. It's just not worth it. Keep your mileage shorter. Keep your speed up and just work on your form as you're younger. When you're older and you finish growing, you can ramp up the mileage. There is plenty of time to do marathons when you're older. Stick to the shorter stuff for now. Those guys have given you some good advice. We love your enthusiasm. We don't want to temper it, but just keep to the shorter distances for now. That's it for Coach's Corner this week. Thanks for watching. If you have your own questions, remember hashtag GTN Coaches Corner below this video in the comment section or any of our videos. We could be answering your question next week. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.