exasperated at the wildly high calories-burned estimates produced both by website calculators and by my Garmin, I've come up with a rule of thumb and wanted to check it out with you.
(note: I know there are highly accurate calculators out there that take all sorts of things into account, but I need more of a baseline to work with in general)
a few threads pointed me to some data on calories per pound-minute, based on speed:
http://www.bicyclesource.com/body/tr...urn-rate.shtml
I took the calories per pound-minute and multiplied by 60 and my current weight (285) to get the per-hour burn for me at various speeds. I then divided each figure by that speed to get an estimate of my calories per mile. the table looks like this:
mph cal/pound-mile cal/hr cal/mile
8 0.0295 504.45 63.05625
10 0.0355 607.05 60.705
12 0.0426 728.46 60.705
14 0.0512 875.52 62.53714286
15 0.0561 959.31 63.954
16 0.0615 1051.65 65.728125
17 0.0675 1154.25 67.89705882
18 0.074 1265.4 70.3
19 0.0811 1386.81 72.99
so it's pretty much in the 60 calories/mile range, unless I get to higher speeds which I usually don't. the website says there is a premium for climbing, but I want to do a conservative estimate.
does this sound like a reasonable rule of thumb? I care because I'm trying to calculate my calorie "deficit" each day of calories consumed - basal metabolic - calories burned exercising