View Single Post
Old 06-12-14, 02:59 PM
  #50  
jyl
Senior Member
 
jyl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Portland OR
Posts: 7,639

Bikes: 61 Bianchi Specialissima 71 Peugeot G50 7? P'geot PX10 74 Raleigh GranSport 75 P'geot UO8 78? Raleigh Team Pro 82 P'geot PSV 86 P'geot PX 91 Bridgestone MB0 92 B'stone XO1 97 Rans VRex 92 Cannondale R1000 94 B'stone MB5 97 Vitus 997

Mentioned: 146 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 392 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 49 Times in 31 Posts
Here is an explanation of calorie burn (kilocalorie or "Calorie"), energy expended (kiloJoule or "kJ"), and how these are estimated for cycling.

How Accurate is that Calorie Reading? | TrainingPeaks

Read down to the end for an example. The author did a ride, and
- from his power meter his estimated calorie burn was 2678 Calories (using approximation that applying 1 kJ to the pedals burns 1 Calorie of stored body energy)
- from his heart rate his estimated burn was 1938 Calories
- from time and distance his estimated burn was 3648 Calories

The power meter-derived estimate is most accurate, the heart rate-derived estimate is less so, and the time and distance-derived estimate is not accurate at all.

I consulted a standard bike power calculator. To ride 20 mph in the drops (road bike, flat ground, no wind, no drafting, my size and weight) requires about 175 watts. Riding 20 mph like that for a solid hour is, for me, very hard work. Doing the math, 175 watts for 1 hour is 630 kJ generated or 630 Calories burned. That is consistent with my rule of thumb stated above, which is

"My rule of thumb - 1 hour of hard riding (heartrate high, sweating hard, legs screaming) is about 600 cal."

(By the way, this is one reason I don't have a power meter - I don't want to be depressed at how little power output I can actually sustain.)

So, for the OP, I think you should be skeptical about if you are actually burning 1100 Calories on the ride you described. It might be right, but it might also be way overstated.

Last edited by jyl; 06-12-14 at 03:06 PM.
jyl is offline