I would have assumed that if you had a strong 40m and 100m run you would also be able to have a strong bike sprint. I think I am wrong, I have ran a 40"YARD" dash @4.35 and 100m dash @10.5, but I am just getting dream crushed anytime anyone sprints for the line…
It’s not a bad assumption that someone that is fast afoot would be pretty fast on a bike, but you have to be realistic. A person that is a fast sprinter is likely in good shape, so they’ll be “pretty good” at many sports, but it’s a different skill to ride a bike. How many guys have you seen at a gym (or worse, at a bar) that have great big upper bodies, and chicken legs? They might have huge bench press numbers, but might not even be able to squat their bench max.
Similarly, think about bench press and pull ups. Being strong on the bench doesn’t mean squat about how many pull ups you can do.
What are the two cadences you are using. Sprinting on the bike requires a higher cadence then you might think or be comfortable with until you practice. Also, how is your sprint at the end of a 5K? Prolly good but I bet if you were to run at 95% of your PR pace and Mo Farah did the same he could beat you the last 100 even though is true sprint is not all that great.
In my mind these are very different. Cycling sprinting is very technical. Realistically, you can’t practice cycling sprinting on your own, well you could but you’d never win. Yes, you can build the appropriate muscle groups but come race day it is all about tactics. Even the Manx Missle has lost sprints and most acknowledge that he is the best / fastest out there.
One key difference is that with classic run sprinting, you are talking about an event that lasts well less than a minute - even for 400m. Bike road race sprinting is two parts - the sprint itself, but you need the aerobic fitness to race over possibly several hours at a hard pace to get to the sprint coupled with either some savvy team or individual tactics to get you there!
I would have assumed that if you had a strong 40m and 100m run you would also be able to have a strong bike sprint. I think I am wrong, I have ran a** 40m dash @4.35 **and 100m dash @10.5, but I am just getting dream crushed anytime anyone sprints for the line…
Tangent: Either coach was high when he timed that, or you ran a 4.35 40yd. A 4.35 40m would make you a reigning world record holder. Although Usain is not known for his fast starts, his 40m time during his gold medal run was 4.65 (including .165 for reaction time…i.e. the time between the gun going off and him moving). The NFL combine 40yd dash, on the other hand, is hand-timed at the start and electronically timed at the finish, and the time doesn’t start until the runner starts moving, so the “reaction time” is really just the time delay between when the timer sees the person move and when they press the button. If Usain bolt’s 40m time were to be measured the same way the combine 40yd dash were done, he would have run a 4.485…
A 4.35 40 is still fast as crap, but you’ve given up all of that specificity when you switch over to bike racing. Instead of squaring up in the blocks, getting in the zone, and giving it all you’ve got for 100m like in running, you have to throw down 30-40% of your peak 5s power for an hour (if not more), then maybe 50-60% of that power for 10-15s, then 95-100% for 5s. Just getting to the sprint in cycling is an entirely aerobic effort. After that it’s still called “sprinting,” but it’s not really *sprinting *from a physiological standpoint. If you gave Cavendish a year to train for nothing but the (running) 100m he’d probably only ever be mediocre at it because, at his core, is an engine that operates in the low zones for 99+% of the race but for that <1% where he could go full-bore faster than anyone else. He’s a sprinter among endurance athletes, but among pure sprinters he is absolutely an endurance athlete. It’s all relative, really. It makes sense too that it wouldn’t really work in reverse either–the dominant portion of the race, the endurance part, would dull a pure sprinter’s edge to the extent that if he even managed to make it to the field sprint one wouldn’t expect him to have much of anything left.
Tactics aside, I was just referring to raw power, I just would have thought their would have been more cross over, there are not a lot of tactics in weekly group rides and when the occasional sprint to the light comes all I can do is wave, as every one has a completely different gear. Put me on a steady climb and I will try to ride away but those darn sprints make me think I never want to do a legitimate bike race…
I suspect the is a good deal of carry over and that someone with a fast sprint has the potential to develop into a fast sprinter on the bike. But as others have pointed out, sprinting on the bike is both highly technical and tactical. On a weekly group ride, tactics may not be that important, but technique still is.
You might be starting in too big of a gear with too low of a cadence. Starting with a higher cadence might help you get on top of bigger gears as you shift. And not being able to get on top of the gear can leave you in everyone’s dust. Everyone’s a little bit different, so it might not be a rule, but spinning at or above 105-110 rpms when leading up to the sprint might help.
Your ability to sustain a high cadence might also be a limiter. You probably have good leg speed, but it might take some high cadence work in order to translate that to the bike.
I avg around 100 rpm for most group rides, someone told me last week the compact crank was holding me back but I don’t even know what that means!
Whats your gearing…doubt very much a compact holding you back. Cav sprints some in a 53-12.
I suspect the is a good deal of carry over and that someone with a fast sprint has the potential to develop into a fast sprinter on the bike. But as others have pointed out, sprinting on the bike is both highly technical and tactical. On a weekly group ride, tactics may not be that important, but technique still is.
You might be starting in too big of a gear with too low of a cadence. Starting with a higher cadence might help you get on top of bigger gears as you shift. And not being able to get on top of the gear can leave you in everyone’s dust. Everyone’s a little bit different, so it might not be a rule, but spinning at or above 105-110 rpms when leading up to the sprint might help.
Your ability to sustain a high cadence might also be a limiter. You probably have good leg speed, but it might take some high cadence work in order to translate that to the bike.
There’s about as much carry over between a match sprint and a sprint at the end of an hour long road race. In other words, not much.
The OP could probably make for a good track cyclist specializing in the match sprint, Keirin or kilo, but road racing sprint is aerobic first and foremost. The last 3 min of a race will be at above FTP and slightly below VO2max. Then you launch.
If the OP didnt do nearly as well in the 800 or the mile (and i’d wager dollars to donuts that he didnt do nearly as well), it’s pretty obvious that he’s a fast twitcher, and there’s really not much you could do.
At the end of the day, you gotta remember that the good road sprinters are all track endurance (scratch or points) racers, and they’d get wallopped lining up against the like of Kenney or Hoy, and vice versa. Just ask Theo Bos how well his conversion from a match sprint specialist to a road sprinter went.
Edit, plus one to what Fleck and ZachCarpet wrote. All you others basically went after red herrings.
I understand all that when on a climb, he can ride away from the same people that are beating him in the sprint. If that’s the case, then endurance may not be the limiter.
And, yes, road sprinters are different that track sprinters. But they’re also different from others in that, at the end of the day, they can still sprint, and while technique is important, it’s not simply technique that separates sprinters like Greipel and Kittel from the non-sprinters.
And while Bos hasn’t risen to the same level on the road as he did on the track, he has still won a good number of races.
Also, we’re talking about sprinting during a group ride, and not after a long professional race. When the match sprinters show up at the local crit, they seem to do pretty well (edit to add: that is, when they can finish the race).
For me, it is a very close correlation. I suck at sprinting on or off the bike.