Sunday, April 13, 2008

3500 Calories

Burn it off this week in exercise: enough Calories to lose a pound. That's our Biggest Loser challenge this week.

My Garmin gives me generous caloric expenditure estimates (since it incorporates body weight, I believe), so that's what I'll use. Let's check some recent estimates:

Last Sunday, run 10.24 miles, burn 1287 Calories. That's 125.6 Calories/mile, or it would take me 27.8 miles running to burn off a pound. I think that's a reasonable estimate. Right now I do that approximately every two weeks.

Today, bike 33.03 miles, burn 2254 Calories. That's 68.2 Calories per mile, or it would take me 51.3 miles cycling to burn off a pound.

3 hours 25 minutes easy-pace cycling (15 mph) versus 5 hours 33 minutes easy-pace running (12 min/mile)? Heck, I'll take the cycling any old day. Bring it on. (Except I don't really think that estimate is accurate for cycling, but who am I to argue with the Garmin experts!???)

Hmm, we get more points if we burn 7000 calories. 102.6 miles in a week? I could do that, except it's been a while since I've actually done it, but it's much easier to double (or even triple, with my low cycling mileage lately) your cycling distance in a week than double your running distance.

We'll see. First I have to get serious about getting rid of my nasty hacking cough.

5 comments:

Jenny Davidson said...

Hmmm--I wish you much luck, but I think the calorie counts are overestimates, fairly drastic overestimate in case of bike! I buy the notion of c. 100+ calories/mile run, but I think that would be if anything a slight overestimate rather than underestimate; and my impression of cycling calories would be more like 400/hour for easy cycling, so that the 3.5hr. easy-pace ride is not really more than about 1400-1500. Nothing to sneeze at, but not as dramatic as you're implying here either--roughly commensurate in fact with the run you describe doing last week! i.e. when considering same duration of running and cycling, the cycling really will be burning a bit more than half the calories.

Here's a link that seems to me fairly sensible: http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/run_or_cycle.html

Nancy Toby said...

Well, sure - but we just have to turn in reasonable externally-derived estimates for the BL contest. I totally agree about the overestimate on the bike (didn't I say that?)

Jenny Davidson said...

Yes! Good luck shaking the cough...

Herself, the GeekGirl said...

3500 calories--lessee, well gosh. That's only 32 miles of running. get moving, girlie! ;-)

TriGirl Thea said...

3500 calories!
Phew! Thats a lot! They really push you in this biggest loser thing don't they?!

Good luck with your training.
And hope you feel better.