I did the Bucks Sportive ride yesterday and wondered how many calories a ride like that burns off… Was a really steady 6h 40 mins for 100k, can I get a rough idea on calories burnt?

I found a calculator that rekons 3000 but it doesnt give an offroad cycling guide, must be more than that…

Without knowing how hard you worked, how much you weigh, how tall you are etc it’s impossible to say, but I’d say that it’s more likely to be 4-6000 rather than 3000.

If I gave you the figures is it possible?

175lb 5ft 8″ and 42 years old… I didnt think 3000 sounded enough.

To give you a rough idea try the Calories Per Hour website.

EDit: Min speed does need to be 11mph tho, which yours would not have been.

Me thinks you are looking at 900 to 1000 kcal/hour. Either way Well done and now you can quaff beer and cakes guilt free for a day or two.

Well, when I did the Transwales last year for the first 2 days (before the battery went flat) I was using a Garmin Edge 305 which measures distance, speed, climbing and heartrate. It knows my age, weight and bike weight. For the first 2 days (80-100k) I was burning in excess of 6000 calories per day…..

Repeat that for a week and it becomes very very hard to eat enough food, something which I thought I’d never ever say!

Yeah most places I’ve seen suggest around 1000 cals an hour while “intensively riding”, i.e. race pace or really pushing yourself, whether that be on road or off road it doesnt matter too much, its about the effort put in, not the speed directly .

Jamie, that site is talking about road riding surely, under 3000 on that.

Longarmedmonkey thats more like it, yeah I am starving today.

PP, how many hours a day was you riding?

Tinsy:

Yeah it was road riding, how about this one?

you can get a base figure from:

mass in kg (you and bike) x 9.81 * altitude gain in metres * 5 / 4200

(100kg all up is 116 kCal / 100m lift)

but this doesn’t allow for wind resistance etc
the 5 allows for 20% efficiency in converting food into mechanical power,
the 4200 is joules per kCal

percieved exertion (rated 1(sat on sofa) – 7(TT effort) )
+3
x
bodyweight(kg)
x
1.2
x
time(hours)

It’s by no means accurate, but close enough for working out how much energy drink etc to take on rides.

so say you did it at an middling pace, (4+3)*78*1.2*6.7 = 4400 ish

Are you trying to work out total number of calories burnt in those 6 hours or number of extra calories compared to if you’d sat and done nothing?

Yup, I made it about that adjusting the 1000 an hour at race pace down to 800 cos I was at “please let me reach the end pace”…

Thanks all..

percieved exertion (rated 1(sat on sofa) – 7(TT effort) )

ie complete guessology ??

Thisisnotaspoon’s calulation gives about 6000-6500 ccalories for my Transwales day’s riding, so that’s about right
🙂

Using a Polar heart rate monitor, I was usually between 800-1000 calories/hour. Higher end of that in races.

Since moved to using a Garmin Edge 705, but I don’t think it uses HR to do calc, or it’s not a major factor in the calc. Road biking always gives a much higher total calorie count (similar to the 800 – 1000 cal/h as Polar) than mountain biking for a given time period. So I think speed is the major factor in the calculation that Garmin uses. (Weight, age, bike weight also entered in).