I’m a runner turned cyclist: these are the five things I miss about running

I’ve long been committed to cycling and ride 15,000km a year, race occasionally and own too many bikes. I’ve even made a living out of my hobby as a freelance gear and bike tester.

I haven’t looked back since switching to two wheels in 2020. After the chase for road running PBs had left me mentally stale and physically fragile, cycling provided a more adventurous, thrilling and stimulating way to push myself, as well as a new world of tech and training to geek out on. 

But on the rare occasion I lace up my running shoes and plod much slower than I used to, I do miss several things about this purer sport. 

Five things I miss about running

1. It’s cheaper

Even in the age of $300 carbon-plated super shoes, running costs much less than cycling, especially to get started.

To start cycling, you’re looking at spending the best part of a grand on an entry-level road bike added to a long list of accessories. 

Careful maintenance can minimise the expense of running a bike, but they come with many consumable parts that need replacing regularly. 

The yearly bill to replace tyres, brake pads, handlebar tape, cleats and a chain plus workshop labour could be $500/£300 and easily at least double if you ride more, have several bikes or have more expensive components. 

Despite running becoming a pricier pursuit in recent years, getting into this simpler sport sets you back less. A couple of hundred dollars and pounds could cover shoes, clothes and a watch.

Running costs, if you’ll pardon the pun, of running can be significant for high-mileage athletes who wear out several pairs of premium trainers. But most people aren’t replacing five $300 pairs a year. 

What’s more, notwithstanding a rise in the price of running races, they are still cheaper to enter than most cycling events, such as sportives, and certainly triathlons. 

2. There’s less data

In the dim and distant days of 2004 when I started racing cross country and track, running was low-tech, almost quaintly so. 

Basic stopwatches were the norm instead of $900 GPS smartwatches, we favoured feel over heart-rate monitors and recorded training in a paper diary instead of with Strava. 

While data has flooded the sport lately, running is an inherently more stripped back sport than cycling, where you have to consider both the body and the bike. 

On a run, you can happily forget rolling resistance, aerodynamics and bike weight to concentrate on your stride instead.

It’s also harder to measure objective effort in running, stripping out the effect of terrain and undulations, where power meters are yet to catch on. Sometimes I think this is for the best.

We still sometimes see the world’s fastest marathon runners going entirely off feel rather than using a watch for splits, and the boom in off-road running has preserved the importance of instinctive pacing elsewhere. 

Overall, running requires closer appreciation of how hard you’re working than cycling when you have watts to guide you. 

As a result, I feel my ability to subjectively pace myself has deteriorated. This can have negative repercussions in races or rides when I’m capable of exceeding or undershooting my power targets. 

Being wedded to my power meters has enabled me to train more scientifically to become much fitter on the bike, so I’m far from a Luddite. 

But I sometimes think it would be refreshing not to have the option or ability to obsess over watts.

3. It’s less time consuming

Running is far more time efficient than cycling. It takes minutes to get out of the door. Post-run, there’s no bike to clean or maintain and service between rides.

After a muddy outing, you’ll only have to bang together your trail running shoes or spikes, and maybe hose them down before drying. 

This makes running a better outdoor sport to integrate into a busy schedule, particularly in an urban area without good cycling routes nearby. 

Turbo training can rival the efficiency of running, but it doesn’t get you into the fresh air. 

I used to think that cycling required less maintenance of the body (think core, stretching and weights) than running. But as I’ve incorporated more strength training into my cycling routine, this no longer holds. 

I’m less convinced that running is universally more efficient in terms of physiological benefit per minute of exercise. This depends on how hard your fitness level enables you to push in absolute terms. 

For example, on the bike a fairly fit rider like myself can hold 300W for an hour and expend 1,000 kilojoules/calories. Even when I was in 70-minute half-marathon form, I would have struggled to burn that much energy running. 

But being a weightbearing sport, running’s higher impact on the body limits how long and far you can run a week. Cycling’s lower load removes some of these constraints, so high volume bike training takes more time. 

4. It’s easier to race

Although I’m largely content to compete against myself and try to improve past cycling performances, I miss how easy it was to compete as a runner. 

Much of this comes down to safety. High speed, bunch bike racing can’t be done on any road at any time, which makes time trialing more feasible in the UK. 

And when and where road racing can be held, organisers are forced to offload increased costs on to racers. Usually held on a traffic-free route, gravel racing removes some of the risk of the open road, but can cost a lot too. 

Entry fees to running races have spiked since I paid a tenner to enter a summer road race series with a packet of biscuits as a podium prize, but it’s generally easier, safer and cheaper to go elbow to elbow with others as a runner. 

Besides, there’s also an increasingly diverse array of events to pick from. Cross-country, trail, fell, track, canincross, orienteering … the list goes on. 

And crucially, you can switch between each discipline pretty seamlessly. Only for off-road events are specialist shoes near essential.

5. It’s safer and less stressful

Somewhat ironically given I gave up competitive running due to injury, I miss running’s relative safety and more relaxing environment. 

Yes, running carries a higher risk of overuse injuries. But in moments of deep apprehension about cycling, caused by being twice hospitalised by careless and aggressive drivers and having to face daily intimidation on West Midlands roads, I have considered reverting to running. 

While road running you’re usually next to the traffic not part of it. Off-road, you can avoid it entirely.

In the UK, gravel cycling can’t quite match trail running’s escapism. Our network of rideable off-road paths is small in comparison to North America’s, for example, so a door-to-door ‘gravel’ ride comprises a lot of time on tarmac. 

Travelling to a bespoke trail centre, as mountain bikers do, isn’t always convenient and adds to the time and expense that cycling demands. 

In light of this, the fact I’m still a cyclist may seem puzzling and goes to show that our attachment to our hobbies can defy logic. 

And since I’m writing for a triathlon website, you might ask why I haven’t combined running, cycling and swimming. Witnessing my freestyle stroke would answer this question.