Will running stairs help improve my bike times? I can only bike on weekends and have relatively poor leg strength. The building I work in is 35 stories. I have run the stairs from time to time in the past when I was too injured to run. Once able to run, however, I discontinue the stair running.
I am training for IMFL (my second IM) and was thinking hitting the stairs for an hour once a week might help my bike. Any thoughts?
How come you can run stairs for an hour, but you can’t bike for an hour? Biking for an hour would be better, if you could do it.
Buy a trainer and get up a little earlier and then ride for an hour.
i doubt it. you will likely become quite good at climbing stairs though.
like the others said, get a trainer, and do the following 55 minute workout multiple times per week. i promise this will make you faster on the bike. not so sure about stair climbing. does ironman florida finish at the top of a building?
5 min w/up
20 min @ 95% of FTP
5 min EZ
20 min @ 95% of FTP
5 min EZ
Yes it would if you are a couch potato with no cycling background AT ALL.
No otherwise. 
Concerning stair running specifically: In their section of Triathlete mag, coaches Paul and Roch covered stairs and described them as a more explosive movement that would help sprint training more than endurance activity. The ‘explosive’ nature of stair running may help the downstroke of the pedaling motion, especially while sprinting or climbing, but would quite honestly be a much poorer substitute to actually biking, *especially *for an Ironman. (If you’re ever training for Alcatraz, though, rock the stairs!)
FTP? Can’t recall what this stands for. Thanks for clarification.
Functional Threshold Power
.
and if you don’t have a power meter, “really, really hard but maintaining a consistent speed throughout” is a darned good analog to 95% FTP, and the one I use.
only if you run them while carrying powercranks on your back.
Running stairs will definitely improve your time…at running stairs!
If you want to improve your bike times, use the time to ride the bike.
It would help for cyclocross, but probably not so much for pancake flat Florida.
I did the Sears Tower stairclimb and my feeling is will improve your 5K run time, but not help your bike.
Done right stairclimbing is high heart rate, full body(use your arms on the rails), and very stuffy as no air moves in the stairwells.
Don’t run down, only up, unless you don’t value your knees.
Bite the bullet and put the trainer in the stairwell 
and then you work on your bricks. Spin for 40 minutes run 95 floors for the remaining 20 and you have a hell of an hour workout.
Okay, so running stairs is out. How about a stairmaster or other such device. I usually workout for about 1.5 hours during lunch and biking is not an option. I can only take the pounding from running 3x’s/week and would like to find something to improve my bike speed. I am presently riding about 90 miles on Saturday and 40-50 on Sunday, followed by a run.
i’m going to disagree with those that say running stairs will not improve your bike time. while i do bike, i also cross train on stairs (54 story building), the step mill, and the rowing machine. the key to these are to put enough stress on your legs to best simulate the stress on your legs from bikeing. in other words, when you are on stairs you MUST be skipping steps. that is the only way the power output will best match what you put on the bike. somewhat the same thing on the rowing machine. you crank the drag factor way up and focus solely on the watts. i’ve been doing stairs since i first started biking competetively for tris (almost 1 year ago) and i’m a collegiate rowing graduate ('05) who has only once again recently started focusing on indoor rowing. the longest i typically bike for is 13-14 miles as i specialize in sprint distance triathlons (again, not even a year of experience racing).
my bike mph has increased a full 2.5mph since the beginning of the season.
i understand there will be other factors involved, but i strongly believe in the stairs!
I would defininately say no it will not help your cycling or your running for that matter. I have no data to support this other than my own experience. I have access to a large aircraft hangar that is approximately 100 ft high. Doing rigorous workouts on these stairs for many years had no noticeable effect on my bike strength or speed. If anything now that I have abandoned the stairs and done mor riding I am significantly faster. Skip the stairs and try to be creative in finding other ways to ride. I do like to use rollers and have put many many miles on my Kreitler’s at all hours of the day and night. It does not exactly rplicate a road ride but I think for your overall skill and fitness they are hard to beat as long as you have a model that provides resistance. Good Luck!
The stairs are the closest thing I’ve ever found to riding a bike. If you want to replicate the bike though, don’t use the railings. I’ve been doing stepmill workouts and they are pretty insane, and the burn is similar to the bike. It’s an 8" step, and if your building’s steps are as well, I’d say to hit every step. If they’re little, then yeah, you’ll probably want to skip a step. I’ve found that the perceived effort at a given power output on the stepmill very closely simulates the perceived effort and power output on my ROAD bike while climbing, but it doesn’t simulate the TT bike well. You still need to be hitting the TT bike.
Gotten pretty serious about that stepmill seeing how I’m going to do the US Bank Tower climb in September.
Stair running is a good conditioner for cycling and running. Of course cycling would be a better option but hey, have to do what we can.
Interestingly champion hill/stair runner Paul Crake went from smashing skyscraper records to a pro cyclist career in a very short time span. Paul was able to finish quite high up in hilly stages in Euro pro races, I think a 5th in a mtn stage in the Tour of Austria (just behind Cadel). After his season was over he’d go and win stair races.
** Unfortunately Paul was blown off his bike in a NZ race and sustained a degree of paralysis.
It beats doing nothing…
i’m going to disagree with those that say running stairs will not improve your bike time. while i do bike, i also cross train on stairs (54 story building), the step mill, and the rowing machine. the key to these are to put enough stress on your legs to best simulate the stress on your legs from bikeing. in other words, when you are on stairs you MUST be skipping steps. that is the only way the power output will best match what you put on the bike. somewhat the same thing on the rowing machine. you crank the drag factor way up and focus solely on the watts. i’ve been doing stairs since i first started biking competetively for tris (almost 1 year ago) and i’m a collegiate rowing graduate ('05) who has only once again recently started focusing on indoor rowing. the longest i typically bike for is 13-14 miles as i specialize in sprint distance triathlons (again, not even a year of experience racing).
my bike mph has increased a full 2.5mph since the beginning of the season.
i understand there will be other factors involved, but i strongly believe in the stairs!
put enough stress on your legs to best simulate the stress on your legs from bikeing
Best simulate the stress on your legs from biking is by biking.
you MUST be skipping steps. that is the only way the power output will best match what you put on the bike
You are under the wrong impression that the power/forces on the bike are greater than those running. A more accurate comparison would have you hitting every step with both feet, and maybe reducing the rise in the steps by 50%.
**my bike mph has increased a full 2.5mph since the beginning of the season. **
Large gains are expected from beginning of training, nearly independent of the training done. It’s the biking that gave you most of those gains, not the stair climbing.
i strongly believe in the stairs
Faith-Based Training ™.