Dilara Tuna is an EBR athlete and ultra-endurance runner and cyclist. In 2026 she was first woman at the Trans Balkan Race and second woman at Crossing Switzerland.
I don’t know what came first but I know I have always been cycling to get places. To go to school, visit friends, horse-riding. Running came as a typical teenager weight loss tool for me and then started becoming something that I actually enjoy a lot.
Both disciplines have helped me discover new places in a very different way and I would be lying if I said that I have always enjoyed them both.
Getting into ultradistances came kind of naturally in both disciplines. Events that I saw online or heard of that caught my attention – the classical “One day I want to participate in this event”.
With distances becoming longer and ambitions rising, you hit walls quite frequently. In ultras as in any other athletic discipline, there is only so much you can prepare for. There are so many factors and uncertainties. A lot of it starts with buying gear, talking to people, making your own experiences during races – nutrition, gear, mental readiness.
I thought I was already training. Finishing races, finishing potentially with decent times, I was thinking I reached my peak in the sport. Not coming from an athletic background, I never even dreamt of running or cycling any of these distances.
At one point I got curious, I considered getting a coach multiple times, listening to runners and cyclists that found their great potential through a coach and how they worked together got me thinking if it could be actually for me.
Having someone to help me find a direction, show me what to work on and find focus. Aside from my life being very messy, uncoordinated and busy with traveling a lot, I always felt a bit lost. Doing last minute panic training was my thing. As long as there was something on Strava or my watch I felt I did something well.
Then I finally decided I was ready to give the whole coaching a try – even though I thought I did not deserve a coach, because who am I, a very average bike packer that likes to run ultra-events. In her mid-thirties.
In my athletic career lets call it, I have watched numerous videos, read books, articles, talked to people. I downloaded training plans for triathlons, ultraruns, and granfondos. Podcasts, blogs, everything. I did know what I had to do to become faster at cycling or running, how to become a faster uphill runner – all of it. But still, I did not do it and I was always overwhelmed by the information and the load of these training schedules. It was too long for me, too difficult and I would normally stick to them for a week, maybe two and would give up.
When I started working with John, I already thought it would be a nightmare for him to organize my training. I have never really done structured training, intervals or else.
His expertise in both disciplines made me trust the process and put the whole planning in his hands. All I had to do was follow the TrainingPeaks workout.
It’s easy getting lost and overwhelmed if you want to combine two disciplines evenly. I don’t even want to know how triathletes do it, but that’s for someone else.
To find focus and cut the “junk training” and panic nonsense I used to do, John has given me clear focused workouts. One of my goals is to become a faster runner and cyclist. This happens very much through faster sessions which we try to incorporate on a weekly basis.
So I usually have 2-3 sessions a week that are focused on more speed and power, depending where I am and what is available that can be a hill repeat with the bike, an indoor trainer session or a flat running interval session. The workouts are not super long, mostly about 6*4minutes threshold on the bike or 4*3min running all out.
If the place allows, every few weeks there can be a longer hill repeat on foot like 10-20min uphill effort.
Sticking to these sessions has helped me a lot in getting my focus on improving speed during these sessions, because it is easy to compare them from one week or month to the other. They do not demand a lot of my time but help me make sure to not only “get out there and run or cycle for hours long”.
Another important point for me is to understand why certain sessions make sense. I know I am able to go out there for hours and hours but what does it mean to get faster and how does the bike help the running and vice versa?
If I have a running event coming up, it is obviously important to do some longer runs to get the body used to the impact. But cycling helps to keep up the volume and not get injured and bored, which is a very easily overlooked mental aspect. If the running sessions become harder, I still can get out there and enjoy myself on the bike.
Balancing the two out and shifting focus in the sessions towards the respective goals is what has helped me enjoy cycling and running and be competitive in both disciplines in my field.
Are you trying to combine running and cycling yourself? Find out more about EBR coaching by exploring the website or getting in touch.