[CrankyMonkey]

My wife was asking last night how many calories she burns when she rides. So I wiped our the old laptop and found this interesting calculator. I haven't looked at the equation it's using to calculate the results but it looks comparable to other sites I've seen. The best part is you can use it to calculate distance with elevation.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6434/CalCalcApplet.html

 

[3034]

HAHAHA.....a 2 hr 17 mile loop on a mountain bike

300 calories.....I dont think so

 

[CrankyMonkey]

Did you plug in your average speed, weight and elevation gain? (weight = bike + rider) Cause if your rinding the flats and it took you 2 hours to ride 17 miles your average speed would be about 8 miles per hour (which is pretty slow for a flat trail). This is also designed for road riding so be a little generous with the elevation. To make up for the rolling resistance. BTW... calculating calories is not an exact science.

 

[johnb41]

Do the calories per hour include the base calories that one burns for the body to function? (pump blood, breath, etc.) I think for me i probably burn about 60-70 cals/hour by simply sleeping. Some online calculators include this in their calculation, and some don't. I know Fitday.com does...

John

 

[Christine]

In the recent issue of Bicycling, there was a little blurb that said something about how 3 Chipwich sandwiches (over 900 calories) = # of calories burned after riding 1.5hrs @ 17mph, something along those lines. Loosely based on a 150lb rider.

Sounds like a lot, but then again 17mph sounds like a moderately hard pace to me. If I'm burning that many calories on the trail, so be it!

 

[CrankyMonkey]

17 on a hilly trail is insane... If I could do that I wouldn't need to keep track of how little calories I'm burning! I can do about 18 on the flats on my way to work. But on a trail, I would be a Pro and my coach would keep track of that for me.

 

[Christine]

Well, keep in mind that this was Bicycling and not BIKE or MTB Action! They're most certainly referring to a mostly flat road ride.

 

[mtbklutz]

How about HR monitors that calculate calories burned? According to mine, I usually end up burning like 1800 on a good hard 3+ hour ride. Seems reasonable to me.

 

[CrankyMonkey]

I've been thinking about getting a heart rate monitor.... which one do you have?

 

[mtbklutz]

Polar i forget the exact model # but it has the cycle functions.

 

[BigLarry]

MTB burns lots of Calories

I use various calculators for calorie expenditure as part of my weight loss program. How much you burn depends on size and effort, but in general, hard MTB riding can burn 500-1000 calories per hour. MTB is one of the best ways to burn a lot of calories fast while having fun.

This web calculators agree well with my Polar M61 Heart Rate Monitor (HRM), which can do a better job of totaling all the ups and downs of my heart rate. The total extra calories burned indeed convert into pounds (at 3600 calories/lb) above a normal week of calorie/point counting when I weight into Weight Watchers.

I ride between 70-85% of max heart rate, the most I can sustain for long periods, and above 85% I soon run out of oxygen.

Above 260 lbs and , I was burning 1000 calories/hour.
Now at 210 lbs, I'm burning more like 800 calories/hour.
I'd expect someone around 150 lbs to burn around 600 calories/hour when working hard, consistent with what others see.

Soon after I got my HRM, for fun I calibrated power output versus heart rate on a few different exercycles at different gyms. I also calculated energy output from climbing steep hills and using the m*g*h energy formula from physics. I found I burn between 150 and 350 Watts as my heart rate goes from 117 BPM to 148 BPM, pretty much on a straight line. Dividing by the calories (actually Kcals) expended, at 4200 Joules/Kcal, I find my body is around 25% energy efficiency.