Back in the height of distance-running popularity, when Jim Ryun’s head bobbed and his long stride kicked him to the tape first, a runner’s career was closer to starting than ending when his college eligibility expired.

Fortunately for former Kansas University distance runner Brian Jensen, those days are long gone for many runners.

“After college there weren’t too many opportunities, so I didn’t have too much motivation,” Jensen said. “My wife was having a lot of fun riding with the cycling community in Lawrence, so I joined her. I was hooked right away.”

In no time, he became even better at his second sport.

“My fitness was there, I just had to learn how to ride,” said Jensen, who credited world-famous cyclist Steve Tilford of Topeka with teaching him the nuances of flying on a bicycle.

Both men will race this weekend in the Tour of Lawrence.

Within a year of taking up the sport, Jensen was racing professionally. He’s back to competing as an amateur and working full-time at Trade Wind Energy in Lenexa. He lives in Lawrence and sometimes rides to and/or from work, a 35-mile, one-way trip.

Even while putting his civil-engineering degree to use at his job, where he helps to identify wind-energy project sites, Jensen trains often enough to keep bringing home hardware.

Jensen, 34, recently won the prestigious Tour of the Battenkill Pro/Am, also known as America’s Queen of the Classics in Cambridge, N.Y. In the past two years, he has won nearly 70 races as a member of the Trade Wind Energy/Trek Midwest Cycling Team. Three days a week, he rides with community cycling groups in Lawrence.

A native of Denmark who came to KU on a track and field scholarship, Jensen will return to Denmark for a vacation Tuesday. First, he has some work to do.

“It’s going to be a tough weekend,” he said. “It should be a good race. They brought in a lot of riders from Colorado and a lot of other places. And the course is very hilly. We don’t have those long, sustained climbs here, but there are a lot of hills in Lawrence.”

Jensen said he enjoyed distance running, but when he talks about that, he doesn’t have the same spark to his voice as when he discusses zipping around corners on a bicycle.

“You get that same good feeling after a workout or after a race in running and cycling, but cycling has quite a few more aspects,” he said. “There’s the speed involved, which you don’t get in running. And you get a little bit of dangerous aspect to cycling. There is a possibility of crashing.”

He realized how that sounded and wanted to clarify himself.

“Crashing is not my favorite part at all,” he said. “I don’t like crashing. Something you have to overcome as a cyclist is the fear of crashing. As a runner, you don’t crash.”

I don’t find watching cycling nearly as interesting as watching, say, elite milers compete on a track, but listening to Jensen, it’s easy to see where participating might be more enjoyable for a cyclist than a runner.