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Unlikely you'll be burning 1000kCal at 16-20mph unless you're going up a steady incline and keeping that speed (i.e. high power). That is a bit of an exaggerat

Unlikely you'll be burning 1000kCal at 16-20mph unless you're going up a steady incline and keeping that speed (i.e. high power). That is a bit of an exaggeration. The remainder of your point stands - cycling is a great way to burn a lot of calories.

asdff 4y ago
You'd have to be pushing 250-300 watts an hour to burn that much, but people do burn that much in an hours time if you look around a few bike forums. If you have time to do a long and leisurely ride, 3 hours or so, the length of the new Avatar movie, you'd probably knock out at least 1000 calories imo. Whats nice about a road bike in particular for caloric burning, at least in my experience, is that it makes you want to push the bike and go as fast as you can and keep snapping up through your gears and catch up to the cars (passing them even when they hit traffic or you are descending).
- sasawpg 4y ago
  At 25% efficiency (on the high side), 1000kCal is about 1050kJ, which is just shy of 300W. Most adults can't sustain 300W for an hour. In addition, reasonable riding conditions (flat, low to moderate winds) will get you moving faster than 20mph at 300W. Most adults are definitely not burning 1000kcal riding a bike for an hour and even fewer are doing that rate of calorie burn for longer than an hour. I regularly have >1000kcal rides, but I have yet to hit 1000kcal for a single hour at my highest intensity. I can do close to 300W for 20 minutes after which time the power drops off rapidly. Larger cyclists that are trained can absolutely sustain 300W for an hour, but won't do this without a significant training effort. I don't mean to imply that you won't burn a lot of calories cycling, quite the opposite, I think it is one of the easiest and gentlest ways to do so. You are however overstating what most non-elite cyclists can regularly accomplish in terms of calorie burn per hour. Source: I have averaged 450hrs/yr for last 3 years and closely monitor my data.

asdff 4y ago

You'd have to be pushing 250-300 watts an hour to burn that much, but people do burn that much in an hours time if you look around a few bike forums. If you have time to do a long and leisurely ride, 3 hours or so, the length of the new Avatar movie, you'd probably knock out at least 1000 calories imo. Whats nice about a road bike in particular for caloric burning, at least in my experience, is that it makes you want to push the bike and go as fast as you can and keep snapping up through your gears and catch up to the cars (passing them even when they hit traffic or you are descending).

sasawpg 4y ago
At 25% efficiency (on the high side), 1000kCal is about 1050kJ, which is just shy of 300W. Most adults can't sustain 300W for an hour. In addition, reasonable riding conditions (flat, low to moderate winds) will get you moving faster than 20mph at 300W. Most adults are definitely not burning 1000kcal riding a bike for an hour and even fewer are doing that rate of calorie burn for longer than an hour. I regularly have >1000kcal rides, but I have yet to hit 1000kcal for a single hour at my highest intensity. I can do close to 300W for 20 minutes after which time the power drops off rapidly. Larger cyclists that are trained can absolutely sustain 300W for an hour, but won't do this without a significant training effort. I don't mean to imply that you won't burn a lot of calories cycling, quite the opposite, I think it is one of the easiest and gentlest ways to do so. You are however overstating what most non-elite cyclists can regularly accomplish in terms of calorie burn per hour. Source: I have averaged 450hrs/yr for last 3 years and closely monitor my data.