Here's what most cyclists get completely wrong about running. Bike fitness doesn't automatically translate into running fitness. In this episode, I sit down with former world tour rider turned professional runner Jimmy Wheelen. We break down exactly the mistakes you're making from the wrong shoes to poor mechanics and skipping those ever essential runspecific strength sessions. We cover injury prevention and how to run without wreaking havoc on your cycling performance. If you want to go for a run without sabotaging your entire cycling season, this episode is for you. Jimmy W, welcome to the Roadman podcast. Cheers for having me on. Long time actually. Uh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Uh, longtime fan of yours, so it's a it's good to connect. Uh, a lot of cyclists were, we were chatting about this off air. A lot of cyclists, I think, were see ourselves more as athletes than bike riders. And we dabble from time to time in running. And as we dabble in running or some of us transition more seriously into it like you have, we make a lot of mistakes. But those mistakes, they can be costly. So I want to early in the conversation at least I want to figure out what does the crossover look like? How do we on board this in a smooth seamless way to start off the conversation? What was your first what was your first runs as a cyclist like? You know, were you getting back into it? Because me, when I go out the door and I lace up my runners, I go out and I fall into probably the school boy trap. If I just run too hard, I have a like I'm going to go for a 40-minute run. I come back and I look at my dad. I'm like, I sat firmly in the middle of zone three for that entire 40-minute run. I was like pinned at 155 heart rate. And then I come in and I'm so sore the next day. Like is that one of the mistakes you see or what are you seeing as like the school boy mistakes? I wouldn't call them mistakes, just mis misunderstandings. Um but it is interesting like I have more I have more cyclists asking me about my running training than I do runners asking about my running training. We're curious. Um, so yeah, and and I think people are seeing see running one as a as a different outlet and and something to enjoy and also something to possibly benefit their bike riding. Um, and yeah, running is a complicated old sport. It's um, everyone will react differently to their first run in a long time if they're a bike rider. um the way they land, the shoes that they choose to use, uh what time of year they're doing it, like have they run repeatedly over the last five years. Like in my instance when I was a pro, um I was still running like once a min minimum like once every two weeks, sometimes every week. Um like if my body was ever feeling a bit off, I would do a 10k jog on a Monday when I was on my my rest day really. So, um, I still always kept the tendons a little bit loaded and the bones and that like feeling for landing on my feet. Um, and uh, yeah, it's uh, there's lots of mistakes that I know my some of my M pro cyclists when they run in November or October, they always ask me, what do I do? And I say, okay, just run really easy and get a good pair of shoes. And what I mean by a good pair of shoes is like a shoe with the new modern foams that are soft and responsive. So basically that softness will take the the load out of your bones and then the responsiveness of the foam as well will also uh do some of the work that your tendon doesn't have to do. Um so it takes the loading takes the loading out of your legs. Um, now it kind of counteracts the idea of going for a run because as a bike rider, you're going for a run to load your legs and instead you're just trying you're just putting it through the shoe and so you're not actually getting those adaptations. But when you say shoes, modern shoes, are we talking specifically about the super shoes with the carbon rebound plate or just any of the modern shoes? No, not the carbon plated shoes. You can wear the carbon plated shoes if you want. Um, but those shoes are more made to run when you're running fast. So, if you're just going for a jog to wear a carbon plated shoe doesn't really make sense because it's you're meant to land on the front of your foot when you wear those shoes. And if you're a bike rider, you're probably going to be landing midfoot/heel because that's kind of how you pedal. Yeah. Um that's not always the case. In my case, for some wacky reason, I land like really far on my toes, even though I spent eight years as a bike rider pedaling through my heels. Um, but yeah, uh, I guess that's why when you see runners going into pro cycling, you'll often see that they climb out of the saddle a lot. Guys like Michael Woods is a good example. Yeah. Um, because they're used to running on their toes. Um but yeah, when when I say it's specifically back back to the shoes, um just the the modern foams we have over 40 mil of stack um and sometimes 45 mil uh and and every brand has their own um their own type of these shoes. Um, and then eventually if you want if you do want to do some threshold work as a runner, which I would recommend for cyclist, but you have to build up to that, I would then wear the carbon plated shoes. Um, yeah, because I've heard cyclists, I've experienced this as well, but we see some bike riders, Warts, Match of Vanderpaul, I know they're both cyclross lads, so there's an element of running in this, but when they post the 10K on their Straa, it's pretty fast. like they're they're moving straight off the bat and now there's a bit of the iceberg theory I'm sure there I'm sure they've you know their first few runs they're doing walk run they're building up to that and the straas on private and then they land the you know the 15minute 5k is the first one they throw up online but then you see others like Matteo Jorgensson had a piece like at home in Nice with Matteo Jorgensson and he said his running is just so bad that he feels like he'd need a full year to build up to actually even being able to go for a jog.
That's a really easy and your body and tendons react really well to that stuff. Um, I mean, you still have to be careful and you don't want to be overdoing it, but just, um, learning how to skip doing that at the end, like doing that for five minutes at the end of a gym session or whatever, you can do it at home. And is there a good uh, is there a good kind of plyometrics resource on YouTube or anything that you've come across? Like what's the running equivalent of GCN where to think of? Uh there's um I'm sure if you just typed in running skipping plyometrics, it'll come up with some some good stuff. It's nothing fancy. Cyclists have a few notorious weaknesses. Like we're not good with hip flexors. And it seems like running stresses a lot of our weaknesses like weak glutes, overdeveloped quads, shortened hamstrings, tight hip flexors. How much does all that actually matter? and the uniqueness of my we'll call these disabilities when I come into running. Do I need to be aware that okay I do have a tight hip flexor angle and this affects my training or this affects my off the run activities big time big big time. I think when riders when riders do their first jog, they might not notice the tight hip flexors or tight glutes, but when they try and go a little bit quicker, when they open up their gate and they try to yeah, finally get a bit of speed and when you're when you're in the running position, you really have to open up your hips in a way that you don't on the bike. Um, and yeah, your glute med, your TFL, your like hip flexor insertion will all get stressed in a way that you're not used to. And so when people go for a run, they complain about their calves. And they also, you know, if they're going fast, they'll complain about Yeah. their glute med, the TFL, and the hip flexor insertion because when you ride a bike, you're just not used to stretching that or using that. Yeah. Um, and unfortunately that's just hopefully the first one you do it'll be a bit sore then the second one will be a little bit less sore and then you'll be good. That was one of those um asking for a friend jobs cuz anytime I open up my stride like if and I'm not even like it's not fast by your comparison but anytime I go under four minute kilometer pace or around that even for a couple of K hip flexors are just toast the next day like toast. Yeah. I mean, the good thing is they tighten up um very quickly, but they also release very quickly. And all you need to do is get one of those stress balls, like a a trigger ball, put it on the floor, find your sore spot, and then just sit on it. It's painful. Um find the sorest spot, sit on it for like 2 minutes, wait, roll around on it, and then you'll be then you should be good to go. Yeah. So, my routine for going on a bike ride is get up and I go on me bike ride. Is the routine for going out for a run a bit more complex than that? Going for just a normal jog. Like I don't do anything fancy. There's no activation exercises. No, not really. Like uh if I'm doing a session, very different story. Like I do a progression warmup um to like go through the paces like you would kind of like you would in a time trial um uh in a time trial warm up. And then you spend a little bit of time zone one, zone two, zone three. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then building up to the pace of the effort. Um, and then also you do plyometric stuff and skipping and things like this just to like fire the nervous system properly and and just to make sure that all the lazy muscles, your hamstrings, your glutes um particularly if you've like driven to go for a run somewhere, you've sat down for in the car for 20 25 minutes and then naturally your glutes and hamstrings aren't going to be firing properly. Um, and if you can, yeah, do some skips, some a skips, some lunges, you can just wake it up super quick. Yeah, that's But there's no need to do band work and some of the stuff you see. No, sometimes some people have weaknesses and trouble areas where they really struggle to um, yeah, wake up their glutes properly. Um, and you could do band work. I I should do more band work. Um, but luckily I have a for some reason I have a body that just is activated very quickly. Um, don't know why that is. I'm getting I'm not young but for some reason coming cycling going into running. I'm 29. It's coming three zero. This is brutal. But like the with the running training I'm responding like a 17y old. It's bizarre. But is that training age? I wonder that because I started last year and I just made this like massive progression inside the first year and it's like I think that's just like beginners mindset very trainable plus your training age possibly. Yeah, for sure. And I I haven't had that like worn down body that a lot of guys would have by the time they're 27 28. Yeah. After 10 years of running as a pro. And the running culture just, you know, I have some friends who are some high level runners and the running culture, it's super old school. Like these guys are running 100 mile every week. You know, we've one coach locally and that was his like mantra 100 mile a week. Like that's a lot of mileage, especially on a kid to be doing that for a decade. Yeah. Doing that doing that stuff through puberty and like you know into the late teens is it's um it's tricky work. It's a lot of it's a lot of load for a growing body. Um, and I was kind of lucky that I kind of went into cycling, matured properly. Not to say that cycling's got the healthiest habits either, but um, yeah, I find myself in pretty good and I have a very healthy body now of the 28 29 to tackle this new sport.
Since getting back into training, the biggest thing that's hit me isn't fitness, it's fueling. I used to finish rides totally wrecked. I'd come through the door, collapse on the couch, scroll through Instagram, and call it recovery. But now that I'm actually fueling properly, and that's anywhere from 80 to 120 grams of carbs an hour, depending on the session, it's a completely different story. I'm coming home from training feeling fresh, and my power data throughout the ride supports this. I can actually function when I get off the bike. It's honestly blown me away how big a difference that proper fueling makes. When I started fueling, right, I realized just how good I could actually feel on the bike. a daily staple in my training now. It's for endurance because I know exactly what I'm putting into my body. Every product is designed for performance. It's tested in real racing and it's used by the very best from Olympians to tour to France riders. It's the same science just without the luxury brand markup. Seriously, jump over to their site and check out the prices. You'll be absolutely blown away. It's real fuel, unbeatable price, great taste, no gut issues. Like, that's a winning combo for me. For Endurance, built on science, proven in sweat. Check them out at for endurance.com and start fueling smarter. I'm going to put the link in the description down below. Really tricky. I've been diving into this a little bit in the podcast uh with some experts in the last few weeks. And it's the idea of good bike handler, bad handler. like your generation, Sagan would have been the goat bike handler, maybe one of the best ever bike handlers. But to understand how Saigon became that bike handler. We don't get good at going downhill around left-handers cuz it's not possible to ride every descent or every corner or every, you know, cobble classic in the world. What you do is you start to build patterns and you start to build a library that you can reference. So Sagan had a super advanced library with millions of templates. So he when he encountered almost any situation, he was able to draw from that library of templates because he came from an off-road background, he'd experienced a lot of shift and just mucking around on the bike where he's like, "Hey, this corner is new, but it's the same camber as this corner. It's the same pitch as this corner. It's the same gradient as this corner." And his brain's able to piece that together in milliseconds. When somebody new comes into the sport, they're not drawn from the same depth of a precedent library as someone more experienced. So that manifests itself in a jittery looking newbie that doesn't know what's going next because they genuinely don't know what's going next. So your your brain goes into this quite justifiable fear mode because it doesn't understand it's going into a dangerous situation with an uncertain outcome. So it starts releasing, you know, chemicals to slow the [ __ ] down. Chill out. You're about to get hurt, which is all very reasonable. So they're two different it's you two two riders approaching the same situation but they're having vastly different mental processes going on in the same thing and I don't think there's any from the research I've seen there's not a way to shortcut that only doing the reps and building that library of precedents. Yeah. Like when I turned pro um I'd never really raced downhill. I was in Australia and then I went to Europe, won one bike race and then was bro and I never raced down a hill bigger than 10 minutes. Yeah. Um and so learning to go downhill the first time I ever railed a cl a downhill was essentially in the do in 2019. It's wild which is so dangerous. But like and I didn't have that library of and everyone else around me just would go down a hill at 80 90k an hour without any without even thinking. And then here I was trying to learn how to go around these corners. I was really good at going left cuz in in uh in Australia all the crits you go left. But then every time we would go right I'd lose two bike lengths. And then out of every corner we turn right, I'd have to do, you know, instead of doing 700 watts seated and holding the wheel, I'd have to do 12, 1100 full gas for like 10 seconds out of every hair pin. Imagine on every downhill on a in the in the do you have like sometimes like 25, you know, right-handers. And I don't I don't know this, but my guess would be that that this works the exact opposite what we talked about. You're building this library of poor precedents. The time I took the corner and I had to sprint out of the corner. And then when you go into another corner, you're just referencing a prior bad experience. Yeah. Yeah. Like uh like no practice is better than bad practice in that scenario. So when you build bad habits, it's hard to rewire that from your brain. And then also if you have confidence issues on that corner, you're probably going to crash one time and then that'll just even f that'll throw you off even further. Yeah. Um and then also in my case, I broke my um my right shoulder and my right hip. So my brain always wanted to uh go protect my right side. So leaning in on the right corner and leaning my fragile side of my body, my brain didn't like it. So, um, it was a a recipe that I could never fix. Um, so yeah, apologies to all the pros who are stuck behind me on my right hand corners during my career. H another question on this uh slightly a different topic but and maybe there's an assumption built into this that isn't correct which I don't know but do you find it weird to switch to a sport that looks from the outside less financially viable regards to sponsorship where there's more emphasis on paying your own travel and other costs and less of an infrastructure that a pro team likely paid for before. Yeah, it's completely different game now. Um there's trade-offs of every job.
When I was a pro cyclist and I would run on the Monday, I would do 10k and I would manually put in the tss has 30 tsfs for a 10k run for a 45minut run. Yeah. So yeah, it's probably that's low. Like it's not much. Yeah, you put a lot. Yeah, but I didn't want to like but then I I felt like it would didn't I felt like it would refresh me like it didn't feel like I would have stress. Then for someone else it might be 140 cuz they just are gassed and sore from it. Yeah. And that's where I think the problem comes in then I think on your end where you underestimate it it's maybe not as much of a problem as if you overestimate it because now we're starting to make poor decisions around your fatigue management. Yeah. It's tricky. This one here, best nutrition tips for runners. Um like in my case last week I did 210k of running. Um, let's go, son. You done more run than I did cycling. Hey, I got I got nothing else to do here. Um, uh, something you'll learn from cycling is um, when you fuel, you fuel like your most important window is right before, during, and then right after. I know that's sounds super standard, but the amount of people that don't actually do that properly is crazy. Particularly runners. Um, like I would have a gel people like runners would look at me strange if I was at the track with them and I'd have a gel at the end of the session. They'd be like, "Are we finished? Are we still got we got more reps?" And I like, "No, no, no. We're finished." I'm just like getting the carbs in straight away. Like you see cyclists uh, you know, when they finish when they find this one year at the end of the race, they're they're putting down 120 grams of carbs of verbos right away. Um, so our runners, we're in high octane fueling mode in cyclone at the moment. 90 to 120 grams an hour seems to be norm. The diet I don't want to call them diet apps. The nutrition management apps like I think 40% of the world are now using Hexus. Yeah, exactly. It's it's per it's stripper feeding down to amateur level as well. Everyone seems to be optimizing all around 360 around nutrition. Are runners in that mode as well? It's it's more complicated for runners because okay like uh you might find someone might be able to have 80 grams of carbs an hour during their marathon and then someone just won't have the gut for it um and they can only do 40. Um you think that's different to do you think that's because of the the bang bang pounding? Yeah, the bouncing. And also a lot of that would also be that they don't train their gut during training. Yeah. Whereas cyclists are more in tune with that. Yeah. Um and I actually think I'm at a big advantage because of cycling. The amount of carbs I've eaten. Um it's kind of I've got an iron gut now. I can decade of practice. Slam whatever. Like it's um I could have like yesterday on Sunday I did um 30k at 3:15s like harder like solid aerobic run. That's a brutal session. Um and I had four gels uh during the run and I felt completely fine. Whereas another runner on the same level as me might have one gel and be like my stomach's cooked. Um, it's also shockingly depressing how fast like I couldn't run a single kilometer at your cruising pace there. Like this is a unique experience because no matter who I have on the podcast, you know, you could at least ride with them for a while. Like, you know, my five minute power might be the same as their 20-minute power or something, but it's like, yeah, it's there's some difference between untrained and trend and running. I think that's not a reflection on my V2 versus your V2. It's just a reflection on my running mechanics. I think um and one other question I'll I'll choose one more question I'll scroll through. Oh yeah. The question that I always get is how on earth have you gone from being a runner of a cyclist to then going into some massive weeks like for example 210k last week? I'm I'm a cyclist. I don't have the bone loading or the tendon loading um of a pro runner that's had 10 years of running. Yeah. Um, I'm still trying to work out the answer for this. Just as simple as you you won the genetic lottery. Yeah. And like the way I land like I land quite perfectly with like if someone does the biomechanics chart on my the way I land like I land right onto my hips. I land right on the right spot part of my feet. So all the tendons are taking the load instead of the bones. Stuff like that. Um, playing around with the shoes as well. And then also the food. I think this food's massive. Since this video has been recorded, I've actually lost the weight. I've gone from 88 to 80 kilograms. I can't actually believe it because the crazy thing is I'm eating way more than ever before. Some days my jaw is actually getting sore. I'm eating so much. But I feel amazing on the bike. My power numbers are not quite back to my best, but I'm trending there very fast. But importantly for me, my big hesitation when I got back training was, yes, I had the time available to train, but I couldn't do it if it meant sacrificing energy, the focus to come and have highlevel conversations on the podcast. And I have so much energy off the bike. Like, I'm coming in the door fresh after three-hour rides. It's wild. I've never experienced it before. And I want you guys to check this out. I chatted with Sam Offair and his co-founder David at Hexus and they've hooked up an amazing discount code for the Roadman listeners. So if you want to try Hexus for yourself, it's honestly the biggest leap that I've seen in cycling ever.
Um, and yeah, they found gains. Um, this if you're an entrepreneur in this running space, like this is gold. Like Bond released the Vapor Plus shoe, which all the Pursuers were using. I got to say in 2011 or 2012, it's taken a decade plus for running to go, [ __ ] maybe we should try and make the Bond Vapor Plus shoe and just cover the laces. Yeah. Yeah. Um and like my foot, if I'm running 22k an hour, my foot's moving like 50k an hour. So, it's not nothing. Yeah. Um and it's a simple piece of um it's a simple change that you can make to a shoe. And then also they have aeros socks. Salomon have aeros socks now. I was about to just say you want to go faster, get yourself some Aeros socks. So like the release of their new shoe, the Fantasm 3, the photos were Aerero socks with the arrow cover of the shoe. It makes it look very different and a lot of the runners were very skeptical and like kind of looking at it like it's a like a marketing thing, which it does look different and it does turn people's heads, but there is a very practical reason as to why it exists. We definitely need a word for a running Fred though because I am going to be out with my Solomon Aeros socks and my AOS shoe cover running 545 kilometer bikes. Yeah, people people I go when I was on at the gym today I'd walk I'd walk in with my um arrow shoes and then I'll put them on the treble and they just people look at me being like what is this guy doing? We got two gels there. Yeah. Anyway, then then they see me run, they they go, "Okay, this kind of makes a bit more sense." But um but yeah, ERO is definitely getting considered more and more by um by companies, but you'll still see in all the major marathons, the pros, 80% of them are in baggy stuff. Yeah. Uh just finish up, Olympics, is it on your radar? Uh 100%. Yep. What's qualification looking like achievable? tricky. Well, I've still got to do um I'll have my debut marathon this year and I'll see what time I can do. Um I'd love to try and run around a 207 208 maybe for the first one. Debut. Oh, I mean I'm doing this full-time as a pro. Like I'm not I'm not here to try and do a bad time. Like I got no excuse in my opinion. If I'm a pro and I'm doing it full-time, I've got to shoot high standards. So, um, and what's the still work off that like a standards? Yeah, I actually don't know the specifics of like I know there'll be two spots for Australia or something like that. I think I've just got to try and make sure that I'm in the top two guys in in Oz. Um, and then that'll be for LA. Awesome. And I think I can do that. I mean, I'm going to say that until told otherwise. Um, look, you're in that dream phase where you just don't know where the ceiling is. Like, you know, is it 207, is it 204, is it 202? Like, you just don't have a clue. Yeah. I mean, like, the dream phase is awesome. I mean, no one thought that I'd try and even become a pro runner. People thought I was crazy. And I told people in the middle of last year, I was like, I'm going to I'm going to run this fast half marathon at the end of the year. I'm going to go pro and I'm like, it's going to be my thing. And then people were just like, "Oh god, what do you mean? You you're gonna do 100k a week. You're gonna get injured and you're gonna get an office job." Um, you're like, "Look at me now, Dad. Look at me now." Yeah. Um, but yeah, that that's like it was always when I was 19, I wanted to be a pro runner and I wanted to make the Olympics. And so now I'm back in that same phase only 10 years later with all the cycling knowledge, all the cycling training. So, and yeah, and now I have proper support with the sponsors and everything. So, um like I'm properly supported as a full-time athlete. I don't have to cut corners with performance. Um it's pretty amazing the the support that yeah, I'm getting from Salomon and even the nutrition company that I just signed with Ministry. Um like it's it's proper setup. It's a very small setup compared to pro cycling, but it's um it's very professional and I can be letting you do your thing. Yeah, that's it. H you've inspired me. It's quart 8 at night here. You've inspired me to throw my runners and just chuck a little 5ker down before bed. H Jimmy, really, really enjoyed this. Uh stay in touch and best luck with the running season, man. Cheers with the chat. Last.