Runners ahead in cycle of life

I COULD start with cliches about the fluoro Lycra gear and the legs shaved until they are smoother than a baby's bum.

Or I could start with a few examples designed to get you angry, the ones about them running red lights, rolling through stop signs, riding past your car every time the traffic slows, forcing you to overtake them multiple times, and hooning along the footpaths.

But this isn't the usual anti-cyclist story. Rather, it's a story about why I'm not a cyclist - and why I'll never be one - because I'm a runner. To be sure, some people are both. But they are also the first to offer up that their bike cost the same as the gross domestic product of a developing country.

And with people using the summer break to consider a new year's resolution to become a weekend warrior, I should do my bit to encourage readers to opt for the superior sport (I don't mean cycling).

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At the moment, the two sports are roughly equally popular in Australia. According to the most recent data from the Australian Sports Commission, 11.1 per cent of the population aged over 15 cycles, while 11 per cent of Australians run. But cycling is growing like Topsy in Australia and the trend seems likely to continue.

The politicians just love it. Look at Sydney Mayor Clover Moore. She broke her ankle on Ride to Work Day last year, but it has done little to curb her enthusiasm for bike lanes across the city. She's pushing a $76 million investment in bike lanes.

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, who often cycles to work, also had an accident in the basement of the state government offices. The handlebar came off the bike. That hasn't stopped her either.

These two bike queens are by no means alone.

Earlier this year, all of the country's transport ministers agreed to a national cycling strategy that has a target of doubling by 2016, the number of people cycling.

The strategy declares that cycling is to be encouraged and that a "step change" in the number of cyclists is needed.

More people on bikes means an active, healthier population. It means fitter citizens who can live in cleaner, less congested cities. According to the strategy, Australians should be a lot more like the Danish, almost one-fifth of whom cycle to work.

So it's apparent they're a good lobby, those cyclists. Just look at what the group Critical Mass does in hundreds of cities across the world on a regular basis.

The group, which started in San Francisco in 1992, swarms through Australia's capital cities each month. They don't much like the criticism from drivers that they stick together like a plague of locusts and block traffic. The group's motto is that they don't block the traffic, they are the traffic.

Governments have been spending money hand-over-fist on building bikeways.

Notwithstanding the global financial crisis, the federal government has a $40m package with local governments for more than 170 bike paths.

Sydney is building a 55km network. In Brisbane, there's 520km of dedicated bikeways and the city council provides bike shelters, cyclepods and even showers.

So what do cyclists get out of it? The smug feeling that they are healthy, saving the environment and beating the city traffic can't be the only reasons.

Vanity has to be a significant factor. You only have to go to where the soy chai latte set hang out to see groups of them clad in their skin-tight Lycra. (That Lycra-wearing is a symptom of gonad exhibitionist disorder seems to be a moot point for this lot.)

We runners are also into our gear; the Cool Running website has 14,913 posts on the topic of shoes, socks and orthotics alone. But at least what we wear won't burn anyone's retina or offend their sense of decency.

When we don Lycra, we mostly cover it with modesty shorts. We favour shorts and a T-shirt, the older the better. There's even a hardcore contingent whose members run barefoot or in Dunlop Volleys (as well as male runners who eschew Band-Aids and Vaseline, and suffer bleeding nipple syndrome).

I have a running buddy who, while shopping for sports bras, was offered some that would support chicken fillets (bra inserts); she wasn't interested in a big bust but she was interested in somewhere to stash her energy gels.

That said, runners have some pride. There's no escaping the fact a T-shirt for the Marathon des Sables, 243km across the Sahara, beats a T-shirt for the local fun run; if you haven't got a T-shirt declaring you've run the track around the Blue Mountains in NSW, well, you are definitely the poorer for it.

But it's hard to look pretty when you're running, especially after 20 or 30km. There's just none of the relaxed freewheeling available to cyclists.

Compared with running, where the biggest expense is a GPS watch, cycling is by no means cheap. Bike-onomics is in fact quite serious. A top-range two-wheeler costs about $15,000.

And because cyclists are a cliquey bunch, gear matters. One runner who also cycles, Darren Moyle, confirms the ego involved. Some cyclists, he says, "are snobs who judge their fellow Lycra brethren by the steel-carbon two-wheeler they sit astride".

"Bike brands are just as important to some cyclists as designer clothes are to teenagers, judging by the similarities in mindset. I get the feeling they both still read Dolly."

Moyle is quick to point out that not all cyclists are like this. And, to be fair, not all cyclists act as if they have an inner Lance Armstrong (seven-time Tour de France winner) just waiting to break free.

With sales of bikes in Australia outpacing sales of cars, there just isn't that kind of Lycra to go round.

(The growth in bike sales, by the way, has been a trend throughout the past decade; more than 11 million bikes have been sold since 2000.)

Of course, some cyclists are ego-less and proud of it. There's a motley crew of commuter cyclists who own utilitarian pushbikes, are scant on fluoro gear and just want to get to work or the corner store in one piece.

But as the numbers of cyclists have grown, so have the subcultures. The ones who ride fixed-wheel bikes that have no gears are the latest. Some, I'm told, wouldn't be seen dead in a helmet (all the better to show off those hard-earned dreadlocks).

But my point is, they could all be out running instead.

Despite the claim that running is bad for the knees, it is in fact one of the safer sports. And it's safer than cycling.

According to research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, football is the sport likeliest to land you in the emergency department (22 per cent of cases). Cycling comes next.

The data shows that in 2002-03, Australian football caused 3944 hospitalisations, while soccer caused a further 3270. Cycling caused 2725. Running and walking combined led to 622.

While running clubs tend to take out public liability insurance, there's no push for runners to take out registration on their feet. There is, however, a push for cyclists to take out registration and personal insurance.

Advocates of cycling point to the health benefits, such as less risk of cardiovascular disease, but those benefits are available to runners, too.

There's also no hiding from the heated debate over whether the rush to build cycleways is all it's cracked up to be. A lot has been made of the issue of cyclists v motorists, but what about cyclists v runners?

I wouldn't risk running in a bicycle lane, but even the shared paths introduce a new form of chaos to a runner's lot. You have to avoid the bikes zigzagging about the place. When they are in a shared zone, cyclists like to speed past runners, ringing their little bells on approach so you can watch them zoom by. If they do slow down, it is to tell a runner to keep to the left. It happens to me all the time. Even some people who cycle worry about the safety aspects of the cycleways.

"Running is a lot safer than cycling," Moyle says. "The introduction of the cycling green corridors has resulted in an influx of less confident riders braving the city streets, which has made it more dangerous for all.

"I've seen two accidents in the past two weeks. One young lady got hit by a car. I tried to help her but she wouldn't respond to my queries; she was conscious but the mobile phone glued to her ear as she sat next to her wrecked bike made it impossible for her to accept my help."

Tim Henderson, a member of my running club, sums up the way many runners feel about cyclists. He did the Wollongong aquathon (a swim and a run) last year, and delighted in passing competitors wearing their triathlon club T-shirts.

Says Henderson: "As I passed them, I thought to myself: 'You're not so tough without your bike.' "

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/runners-ahead-in-cycle-of-...