BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I'll be needing this.

thank you Ahlir!

awe, man! what I do is "light"? That's got to be calculated for someone in Kansas. There's a distinct difference between 10 mph up a hill and 10 mph on a flat.

yeah, i'd imagine the table is for level ground and you'd have to correct for hills (both up and down).

although, my guess would be riding with hills burns less calories both because of coasting on the downside and going anaerobic on the climb.

Nevertheless for most of us, losing 1 pound is probably 4 hours @ ~18 mph (i.e., ~70 miles).

So be careful out there...

I know someone who's managed to drop about 100 pounds in the past year. Problem is, he's plateaued at X pounds for the better part of two months. I've dropped some subtle hints that adding a bicycle to his weekly activities might help him get off that level, to little avail. This info will help.

What I'd like to think is that putting in an hour a day cycling somewhere would really help. However, he's been so heavy for so long (decades), the very idea of him getting on a bicycle at all is entirely foreign to him, just as it was in finding out he can buy pants that fit at a regular big-box store.

One step at a time, though, and I'm sure there are tens of thousands more like him out there. Patience on my part, baby steps on his and theirs, and really, the less said the better.

Stu; At bike forums there is a section for the heavier rider. Many of them were new to cycling and a lot of them have lost a substantial amount of weight.

http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?248-Clydesdales-Athenas-(200-lb-91-kg)

I'm gonna have to check those forums out as well. I am also a less than little guy. Stu you can pass along my thoughts on cycling and being large. When I first started thinking about trying to loose some weight I started by walking. That worked ok but you can't get far in an hour and my knees were taking a beating. Riding a bike is pretty low impact (unless you crash) and the thing that sold me on it was that unlike walking I could GO places.

Just a thought. Will have to add this to my blog. This is a good topic

i have plateaued with cycling. i am starting to add running to my routine, but there are only so many hours in the day. so when i have to pick at the gym, i would rather be on a bike, although stationary is pretty boring.

Great info - I've often wondered about the calorie burn at different speeds.

I'm a little surprised at the 60+% increase between the 130-pound and the 205-pound cyclist - wow, that's a big difference. I didn't realize heavier cyclists would burn that much more.

I think the light, moderate, vigorous and other categories are good ranges.

I am suspect of the calories burned. I think they

are like 20% off.

I weigh 137 and have yet to see the 1000 k/j hour on

my powertap and converting it to k/cal.

I think my most is like 800 k/hr. 600/hr for

multiple hours is a solid ride. Screwing around the

city its like 400.

Actually, it works just like common sense would tell you. The harder you exercise, the more calories you burn. Hills are harder than flats, because the effort you invest on the uphills isn't entirely repaid on the downhills due to wind resistance.

For the same amount of time, you'll burn a lot more calories at an "anaerobic" level of exertion than "aerobically". The problem is that you can't really sustain that anaerobic level for very long. In theory, you could burn more calories by riding all day at 60% of VO2max than you could by riding for 20 minutes at 90%. In practice, none of us have an unlimited amount of time, so we have to fit exercise into a schedule.

Given a fixed period of time, you burn the most calories by exercising at the highest intensity level you can sustain for the entire time.

Of course, you also have to consider your ability to recover and stay injury-free, and so forth.

A good reference for this stuff is "Serious Cycling" by Edmund Burke, if I remember the title correctly.

steevo, power output is less than calories consumed. The human body is pretty inefficient.

++ on using the bike as exercize + going places. I can walk around the same 7 streets in my "plan", and it stays interesting for a week. In the same amount of time, I can get to different zipcodes I've never been before and back on a bike. AND my back and hips don't hate me after.

Stu - kudos to your friend - that's impressive. My dad is trying to loose just less than that, he's down 30 and needs to drop another 50, also plateaued. I pointed out to him that this is the first time in his life he's plateaued rather than yo-yo'd back up. That is a huge accomplisment for him. Not sure if your friend is the same, but there are victories all over if you look hard enough

A scale does not always give an accurate picture in an exercise based weight loss program. The worst that can happen is the person loses (only one o in lose) body fat but gains muscle, and their scale indicates nothing happened.

I wonder if this is the plateau effect people speak of.

Lyle, its pretty widely accepted that k/j is

convertible to c/k cause we are 25% efficient on

bikes and it is .25 conversion ratio. this has been discussed to death elsewhere.

Likewise, riding in Wpa, we coast a lot. Like 25%

of every ride is coasting downhill, even when

trying to maintain a steady effort.

So like I was saying, riding a 1 hour time trial,

which by definition is as hard as I can go for 1

hour, I have not seen the 1000/kj hour.

And this chart is a bit off I think.