calories on long ride days
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proximateplatypus
Posts: 8 Member
hi I am new to this group! I am a long distance road cyclist with 2 years experience road cycling, but I also ride a cruiser for daily transportation. I am trying to train for my first race in the beginning of october. on the weekends I like to do a longer ride of 100-200 km, but I don't do a ride like that every weekend. maybe 2-4 times a month.
I am very confused about calories though, because every time I put in the ride data for a long ride its between 3000 and 5000 calories. Today I rode 200km in about 11 hours so it said I burned over 5200 calories!! How much of that am I *actually* supposed to eat back? During today's ride, I ate 3 bananas, a pack of almonds, a pack of dried apricots, and drank a whole bunch of green tea. in total today I ate 2663 cal.
My regular calorie settings: I've calculated my TDEE, including exercise, and put my calories at a deficit (1698) then I eat back some of what I burn with exercise. I want to lose a bit of weight but getting stronger and faster is much more important to me.
if I burn 5000 calories, I'm definitely not going to eat all of that back. what should I do/eat on long ride days?
I am very confused about calories though, because every time I put in the ride data for a long ride its between 3000 and 5000 calories. Today I rode 200km in about 11 hours so it said I burned over 5200 calories!! How much of that am I *actually* supposed to eat back? During today's ride, I ate 3 bananas, a pack of almonds, a pack of dried apricots, and drank a whole bunch of green tea. in total today I ate 2663 cal.
My regular calorie settings: I've calculated my TDEE, including exercise, and put my calories at a deficit (1698) then I eat back some of what I burn with exercise. I want to lose a bit of weight but getting stronger and faster is much more important to me.
if I burn 5000 calories, I'm definitely not going to eat all of that back. what should I do/eat on long ride days?
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Replies
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The calorie estimate algorithms here are famous for over reporting exercise values.
Some of the the "folk wisdom" on the boards is to divide the figure and eat back only a percentage.
50% as a rule might be a good starting point and then adjust from there.
Getting a better count will require more info than just distance, rider weight, and time. Climbs, weight of cycle, speed, equipment, and wind resitance all factor in. A heart rate monitor can give you better numbers. A power meter will give you even much better estimates, but this option is pricey if you do not have one.
Bottom line is that you can never get it perfect, so experiment and see what works best for you. IMO.
Good luck on your race, Proxi, and welcome to the cycling group!
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^ This.
As Archon says the calorie burn estimator in MFP is wildly optimistic. This is especially the case for cycling because of all the variables that effect energy output.
As an example, a few weeks ago I did a 100 mile ride with a fair bit of climbing, 10,000ft. My average speed was 13mph with the ride taking 7:42. When I enter the time and speed data into MFP it spits out a 5333 calorie burn. However, I have a power meter on my bike which measures the work done during the ride. This will take into account many of the variables such as my weight, the climbs, the wind etc. and as such will do a better job of giving a more accurate rendering of calories burned. In my case it was just 3,460, almost 2,000 below MFP. On rides that demand less effort, the gap can be substantially more. I'm 5'11" and weigh 190lbs.
In terms of eating back calories, it depends on a number of factors. I ride a fair bit, 250-300+ miles per week this season, and I find that if I don't eat back most of my calories, I just don't have enough energy to ride. My MFP daily goal already includes a deficit so I try to eat as close to my total cals each day (MFP goal + exercise)0 -
If you have the money, you might consider getting a power meter. They're coming down in price and will give you the most accurate look at the numbers. Check out dcrainmaker.com for some current reviews.
A cheaper though less accurate alternative would be to use Strava to measure your ride. Its algorithms for calorie burn are much more conservative than MFP's. They still may not be exactly right but at least they aren't as wildly high. For example, I compared my ride today in Strava (710 calls burned) to MFP (1290 cals) to Cyclemeter (1156 cals). I'll take the Strava number.0 -
I use IpBike, android phone, and use its virtual power to estimate my power output and calories expended. As with any virtual power meter, it's not very accurate when there is a good wind blowing. I could up the rolling resistance factor but it's a crap shoot. It's great on calm days. I am also using the Kurt Kinetic t-725w computer for instantaneous power out readout for now until I get a decent mount for my phone (hopefully tomorrow). Check out Brim Brothers also. dcrainmaker had a separate writeup.0
