Cycling and walking calories strava

kdrew11

Does anyone know why when I walked 1.6 miles in 30 mins this morning, according to Strava I burnt 212 calories but when I went for a bike ride for 40 mins and cycled 7.1 miles I only burnt 172 calories even though I was far more out of breath and my legs hurt far more on the bike ride?

It doesn't make sense. I wasn't remotely out of breath on the walk!

AnnPT77

I'd say this: Breathing rate, soreness, sweating, and that kind of thing aren't very useful guides to calorie burn.

Most people do some walking, so we're reasonably well-adapted to it, and it doesn't feel very hard. If you don't do a lot of cycling - as I'd guess from that report - you're not very conditioned to it, and it will be harder on your body, cause more strain, make you breathe harder, etc., just because you're not used to doing it.

I don't know anything about you, so it's hard to give any opinion on how realistic those calorie estimates are. I don't know any of how tall/heavy you are, what kind of terrain you were walking/cycling on, what kind of bike you ride, even what the weather was, etc. (Probably Strava knows some of that.) The calorie burn is related to how much work we do, pretty much in the physics sense of "work". You'll burn more calories going up/down hills, riding a heavy mountain/hybrid bike vs. a speedy/light road bike, walking/riding into a strong headwind, walking at a heavy bodyweight vs. a light one, and that sort of thing.

BrianSharpe

As a rule of thumb walking burns an additional 30 calories per hundred pounds of body weight per mile walked so a 200 lb person walking 1.6 miles could reasonably expect to burn (net) 100 cal.

Cycling OTH is insanely efficient mechanically and your weight has less of an impact. Cycling is one of those activities where to get a really good handle on energy expended having wattage data is useful. FWIW I weigh something more than 200 lbs, my most recent ride was 11.17 km (7.3 miles) in 30 min and I burned (with wattage data so accuracy is going to be pretty close) 170 cal.

As Ann aptly pointed out perceived exertion is not a reliable gauge of energy expenditure.

cwolfman13

Your walking calories are probably about 1/2 of what was reported at best. The cycling calories seem reasonable. The calories you expend cycling really come down to how many watts you can put into the pedals...an untrained/unconditioned cyclist may perceive a high level of effort simply because they're unpracticed...but at the same time they're likely not putting out that many watts of power because they are unpracticed.

Do things because you enjoy doing them and you enjoy the benefits of the fitness and health they bring...don't just do things cuz calories.