You know it’s the off-season when the road and gravel elite begin popping out smokin’ fast workouts in their run shoes.
Visma-Lease a Bike’s Bart Lemmen, gravel privateer Freddy Ovett, and the recently retired Nacer Bouhanni have all blown the doors off race results and Strava feeds with their recent running antics.
Lemmen hit third on the podium at his hometown 10K this weekend in a time of 33:38. That’s a raging 3:21/km [5:23/mile] pace that the most ardent amateur – this writer included – could only dream of.
Last week Bouhanni banged out a 2 hour 34 minute marathon in Frankfurt. It was the controversy-stalked Frenchman’s first full marathon and reportedly one of the fastest times recorded by an ex-pro cyclist.
Bouhanni’s 3:40/km [sub-6 minute mile] pace over the tough 42km course was good for 118th male of nearly 8,000 runners.
Also last weekend, Ovett sprinted around a 40km interval workout at a similarly eye-watering speed.
♂️ Very few ex-procyclists have ever run a faster marathon time than Nacer Bouhanni did in Frankfurt today – 2h 34m.
List of names was able to find after a quick search
Leonardo Calzavara – 2h 26m
Jerome Chiotti – 2h 28m
Daniel Atienza – 2h 29m♀️ Emma Pooley 2h 44m in 2013.
— ammattipyöräily (@ammattipyoraily) October 27, 2024
Sure, so Bouhanni retired last winter and has had time to specifically train.
Similarly, Ovett was a former middle distance champion and has good genes courtesy of his father, the two-time Olympic gold medalist Steve Ovett.
But there are plenty of active pros besides Lemmen who convert their physiological prowess to the pavement, even without a running background.
UAE Emirates’ superdomestique Adam Yates ran a sub-three hour debut marathon in Barcelona in 2021. Soon-to-retire Frenchmen Romain Bardet and Lilian Calmejane are both noted trail runners.
Cyclocross-crushers Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, and Tom Pidcock typically pull on running shoes at this time of year in preparation for the mud and guts of their winter program.
And those “three kings of ‘cross” are known to run all year round, just like grand tour bigs Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel.
The WorldTour peloton is starting to become a run club.
Running to be robust
There’s a strong physiological carryover between running and riding.
The aerobic focus of road and gravel racing builds an endurance engine applicable to most long-burn sports.
That’s why monument-masher Van der Poel was recently able to saunter around a steady 10K at a nose-breathing 114bpm average heart rate.
It’s also how sub-4 minute miler Michael Woods switched from the running track to winning at the WorldTour.
But the benefits of running extend far beyond a winter aerobic boost and endorphin buzz.
The high energy demands and minimal weight-bearing nature of high-volume cycling leaves athletes at risk of osteoporosis or osteopenia.
In fact, recent research from the Dutch HAN University of Applied Sciences concluded that two-thirds of professional cyclists had poor bone density.
That’s why pro teams push riders to pull on a pair of running shoes.
“I really support riders running,” Visma-Lease a Bike performance guru Mathieu Heijboer told Velo. “It makes them more robust, less injury-prone, and it’s good for their bones. We really want to make them complete athletes, not just riders.”
Some form of cross-training, whether running, skiing, hiking, or rowing, is now an essential part of any pro’s off-season program.
Teams even support riders running their way into the racing season, provided it doesn’t zap their pedaling potential.
“I’ve tried to put running into the off-season in the past two years,” Tadej Pogačar recently revealed. “I try to start in the off-season and keep it as long as possible in the season.”
Running was once a forbidden taboo in the pro peloton.
But like so many other aspects of elite performance, times are running forward, fast.
