Fifty Plus (50+) - X-runner has questions

HI,
I used to run alot and gave it up for the love of biking, and to save my back,
here's my question,
Many exercise pages have formula's to calculate your acutal caloreis burned, now with biking it a very complex equation, base on speed, time , weight of rider,wind speed and so many more.
Is there a formula you can plugin speed/time/distance. and get a rough figure.
Doug

As you will soon learn, hills and #*$@ wind make so much difference on a bike that they can't really be ignored.

I suggest you take the complex equation you have and enter some values typical for your rides for the values other than speed & distance. Then you can just plug in those two parameters and get your quick estimate for each ride.

Or you can just spend all the energy spent solving equations to ride more.

You might try this. But remember you have to fill in both metric and US pounds plus how much you plan on working.

http://www.csgnetwork.com/caloriesactburned.html

You can get close to your Metric weight by dividing your weight in pounds by 2.2. So if you were 200 pounds you would plug in 90.9 KGs.

This site works about the same.
http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/calories-burned-by.php?search=cycling

If you are in the market for a new cycle computer, Price Point has a new one in its house brand "Sette" product line. It's the FX-3 wireless. $40 reg, on sale $35.

This is a relatively inexpensive new generation unit with a barometric altimeter. Because of the altimeter, thermometer and because of inputs for rider age and weight it makes a reasonable guess at calories burned.

There are a lot of screens to step through to get to all of the information and at this price point it will not talk to your computer at home or provide plots of rides but some of the data is fun.

Wind, however, is still at your discretion, but your over 50 so you already know about that...:)

Many heart monitors will give you calories burned- but watch out. They are not that accurate. They don't calculatre the calories gained at the PIE stop.

I'd just guess, and take Lexapro for the OCD.


This does not constitute medical advice. I did not stay at the Holiday Inn last night. For entertainment purposes only. Does not prevent sexually transmitted disease. Your mileage may vary.

+1 on the heart monitor idea. Once you input your age and weight, your heart rate over the exercise time is a pretty good proxy that is used to estimate calories burned. HOWEVER, if you consume sports drinks (or eat pie) it doesn't know that.

Calorie consumption per mile or km varies more with cycling than with running because of the huge and variable impact of air resistance. A good zeroeth order approximation is 50 cal/mile or 30 cal/km for cycling, about twice that for jogging.

Calorie consumption per mile or km varies more with cycling than with running because of the huge and variable impact of air resistance. A good zeroeth order approximation is 50 cal/mile or 30 cal/km for cycling, about twice that for jogging.


Another way I have found is per hour.

I used to do a long hard ride offroad and I found that Calories used on that was around 500 per hour. But that did not take into count the amount of food eaten in the 12 hour ride- and that was a lot. I used to gain weight on that ride- but I lost it in the next week.

I do a respectable pace on the road for around 4 hours most weeks and only use around 1100 calories- or 275 per hour.

Problem is that you have to find some way of measuring Cal in the first place. The heart monitor and Garmin both give this.

And plenty of "EX" runners on the forum- myself included.