paste_me

I just got a heart rate monitor and took it on my ride today. It claims that I burnt 6,000 calories in 4 and half hours. I think that is almost equal to 2 pounds of weight, I might be wrong. I do not have any expercience with HRM so just wanted to know if that is accurante. I know it has to do a lot with your weight, age, height, fitness - I'm about average in all of these, 5 11, 22, 185 pounds.

I think 6000 is way off but wanted to hear from you guys.

LorenzoNF

Not accurate. I'm about your height, weight, and age and my powertap says that for a ride that that I'll do about ~3000 kJ of work, which means about 3000 calories burned.

corbett1010

what brand did you get? What was your average heartrate? that is very high. that is over 1300 calories an hour, i would not burn that much at my max heartrate running on a hot summer day

i use a polar cs300, after i did the fit test on it, it seemed more accurate. as you get in better cardio shape and you increase your vo2 max the ammount of calories burned is less.

Velo Dog

sounds high, but maybe not wildly high. Weight is an important factor. I weigh about 240, and BalanceLog (old computer program I've had for years) says i used almost 2500 cal in a 35-mile ride today. Speed doesn't make a huge difference, according to the software--you use more calories per minute if you go faster, but you ride for fewer minutes.
Don't know how accurate BalanceLog is, but I've been using it off and on for 10 years, and it's very good at figuring out how much weight I'll gain or lose based in intake and activity.

sirious94

wait, wait, wait, 4.18 J = 1cal so 4.18 Kj = 1Kcal or 1 of the calories that we see in the nutrition facts, so your 3000 kJ is closer to 717 calories. Remember though that this is work output so we have to multiply by about 10 because are bodies are so inefficient. giving us 7170 calories, and since your powertap can measure differences in hills, the 6000 calories should be a decent estimate. on the other hand, everyone is different, some people are more or less efficient, so actual calories burned can vary.

umd

Our bodies are about 20-25% efficient, so you would multipy by 4-5, not 10. Therefore converting work kJ to fool kcal directly is considered to be fairly close. Some people also use 1:1.1 instead of 1:1.

Not sure what you mean about measuring differences in hills though...

Barese Rider

OP most HR monitors need to be "set" for height and weight, sounds like you need to do the same with yours. Ive lost alot of weight in the last year [deliberately] so I feel fairly confident that my HR monitor is giving me good info. I find that on ride of moderate intensity [15 to 17mph average] that I burn somewhere between 30 and 35 calories per mile, and when I up the intensity I up calories burned but I have never burned more than 600 calories per hour.[Im 63 and consider myself a recreational rider]. Your ride of 70 miles in 4+ hours cant be seen as a high intensity ride so it sounds like something is off with your function. A very easy way to up calories burned is to ride some hills and another is to ride a good distance against a dreaded strong wind.

Bob Dopolina 

My power meter is usually in the 700kcal an hour range at race pace. I rarely burn more than 4000kcal in a single ride. 6000 seems wildly high.

zr4

I usally figure 40 cal per mile.

fly:yes/land:no

hrm calorie calculators are not very accurate. but, i use them to measure workload from week to week.

JRonaTrek

im 5'11 at 198 lbs, and i did 50 miles about 2 weeks ago, my HRM stated that i was close to 4800....and i had it set, by one of my firefighter friends.

I think your HRM is pretty accurate, by the way, i have a POLAR RS400 i believe.

roadrider63

I'm not sure how accurate my hrm is (ironman road trainer) but it does coincide with some other pc based estimating programs. According to the hrm manual it uses your weight, time and hr to give you your cal. burned. My last ride looking at my hrm was 1:22 at an avg hr of 143. I think I have 155 lbs programed into my hrm and it says I used just over 1100 cal. According to their heart rate zones and the max I have seen on my hrm (175) that ride was considered a Z4 ride.

I'm new to the HRM thing so not sure what all of this means yet but I can't afford a power meter nor do I really need one for my riding, so it is just another metric for me to use for guaging fitness and pacing longer rides. Who knows where it will lead.

I'm more concerned about the calories burned based on what I may really be needing to consume on longer rides to keep from bonking. I know I can't refill the tank completely but I'm sure I take in way less than what I probably really need. As I said, I'm still learning.

JoelS

I'm on my 2nd. The Garmin 305 I had was about 40% - 50% high. The 500 I have now seems pretty close.

For 75 mil, I'd be somewhere between 2500 and 3000 calories.

Jive Turkey

Same here.

crhilton

I used to figure about 40 calories per mile, then feel bad when I overate. Got an HRM and discovered that:
1. Calories burned per mile is very variable. I can go out and burn 70 calories a mile, hammering (I weigh less than you do incidentally). I take it easier, I burn less.
2. Conditions matter too: Hills, wind, wind, oh and wind. Yea, not every 70 miles is equal.

Your's sounds awfully high (especially for the pace) but I don't know what kind of roads you did that pace on. Your pace would be downright fast on gravel, especially for that distance.


I'd double check what you entered on the HRM for height and weight.

paste_me

My HRM is made by Sports Line. Is this a bad brand?

I checked the setting but the weight and height were off, weight was set to 200 and height was 5' 8'', I guess they think that this is average.

Thanks for all of your response!

Diegomayra

I don't have a HR monitor or powertap, but from the kcal calculators I've used it seems that when I increase the intensity I burn fewer Kcal. I burn more calories riding at 15mph than riding at 19mph.

kleinboogie

My 305 and 705 both report about 50-70% high in calories burned compared to what my Kj says on the 705. I trust the Kj more. I'll turn 700-900 Kj an hour depending on the intensity.

sfrider 

I usually go by 25 per mile plus ascent / 4. So my most recent 85 mi ride with 7000 uphill would be 85 * 25 + 7000/4 = 3875 kcal. This may be a slight underestimate. For the same ride my Edge 305 with the latest firmware suggested 6200 kcal, which is rather high. I think 6000 for a 70 mi ride is way high, unless it's extremely hilly. Talking spending hours on a mix of 7-10 and 10-13% grades.

sfrider 

I don't think HR is significant for longer rides, which is where calorie estimates matter more. While energy consumption goes up above threshold it's not possible to spend more than 30-45 minutes at that effort, if even that long. (Depends on how far over it is, and how much LT creep you accept during the remainder of the ride.) While some portion of a long ride might be slightly above threshold, I doubt it's really significant in the total. A 10% error for half an hour just isn't going to matter much.

MrTuner1970

I'm 5' 11", 39, and 188 lbs. Did a ride last Saturday of 78 miles. Garmin 500 says 3,200 calories. (Using the heart monitor and the preceding data, along with the Activity Class that seemed to best fit.)

datlas 

Who cares about calories? If you are trying to lose weight, eat less and ride more.

Maybe I just don't get it.

jwible

PT and Garmin 705. I use the KJs instead of Cals. At LT it's about 1000 KJs / Cals and hour. At 150BPM or so it's about 600 KJs or 10KJs per minute. So four hours at a comfortable pace for me would be around 2400 KJs / Cals for four hours.

I'm 5'11" 185.

ericm979

Unless you have a power meter, your "HRM" is just guessing how many calories you used. They usually guess high. That makes people happier.

Web sites are also guessing. Checking the accuracy of your "HRM"'s calorie guess by comparing it to a web site's guess is entirely useless.

sfrider 

Not everyone rides to lose weight.
Not everyone is overweight.