Map my Ride Calories and MyFitness Pal

4thDegreeKnight
4thDegreeKnight Posts: 69 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Question based off other's experience.

I've always thought calories assigned by MFP are kind of generous, so I usually "correct" them by 20% or so when I enter the exercise (and then eat them). But this was based off my experience on what MFP says, to my Jawbone (at that time), and the treadmill which has my weight, height, etc.

So I just started cycling, and I am really bad at it - Hills are my archenemy. So guessing calorie burn is hard. What someone considers mild or moderate is strenuous for me.

To address this I downloaded MapMyRide which recorded a 4.5mi ride with hills. 20% of the time I was coasting downhill at 10+ mi an hour, another 25% I was killing myself uphill, and the rest was flat but strenuous cause I was wiped.

MapMyRide says I rode 4.42mi for 33min at an average speed of 7.8mph for 620 calories. 30min for 620 sounds like an awful lot - was it watching my speed, distance, effort? How accurate was this.

Any idea?

Replies

  • CincyNeid
    CincyNeid Posts: 1,249 Member
    I find MapMy Fill_In_The_Blank To grossly overestimate caloric burn.

    To put it into prescriptive Yesterday I went out for a 11.2 mile ride with an average speed of 17.0 MPH with a max speed 24.0 MPH and only burned 515 calories, according to Strava. And here are images from the same ride according to Garmin Connect, Edonomodo, and Ride With GPS.

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  • 4thDegreeKnight
    4thDegreeKnight Posts: 69 Member
    Thank you for showing metrics. That helped me a lot and goes on the "cut suggested calories by 20%" that I did while hiking/walking. You rock.
  • CincyNeid
    CincyNeid Posts: 1,249 Member
    No worries. I know it's a bit of information overload but I have friends that use the various services so i just have them all sync'd behind the curtains sorta speak.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    CincyNeid's calorie burn is apparently measured with a power meter, which means it's within 5% of the truth. It's less an estimate and more a measurement, in the way your bathroom scale measures your weight instead of guessing at it. That data is gold.

    @CincyNeid - how did you average 198w and have a 20 minute MMP of 197w?
  • CincyNeid
    CincyNeid Posts: 1,249 Member
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    @CincyNeid - how did you average 198w and have a 20 minute MMP of 197w?

    Fixed gear bike on flat land. That data is from a 12 mile ride with less than 200 feet total elevation change.
  • CincyNeid
    CincyNeid Posts: 1,249 Member
    edited July 2016
    The thing that's bothering me is how Strava, RwG, and Garmin have 3 different Avg Power readings from the same GPX file.
  • CincyNeid
    CincyNeid Posts: 1,249 Member
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  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    edited July 2016
    4thDegreeKnight wrote: »
    What someone considers mild or moderate is strenuous for me.
    That it feels hard or easy is nothing to do with calories.
    If a super fit person at the same weight as you was cycling beside you on the same bike and feeling the ride that you find strenuous was easy to them you would burn just about the same number of calories.
    Calories are physics not feelings.
    MapMyRide says I rode 4.42mi for 33min at an average speed of 7.8mph for 620 calories. 30min for 620 sounds like an awful lot - was it watching my speed, distance, effort? How accurate was this.

    Road? Trail? Sand? Race bike? Bargain basement supermarket special bike on squishy tyres?

    Whatever your ride was you would have to possess an extraordinary level of fitness to burn at that rate for half an hour.

    Maybe try Strava because your app sounds sound far too high?


  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    CincyNeid wrote: »
    The thing that's bothering me is how Strava, RwG, and Garmin have 3 different Avg Power readings from the same GPX file.

    There used to be a heated debate about whether or not you should include zeros in your average power. Some people felt that you should exclude them, to only know your power during times when you were pedaling. That's wrong, but somewhat convincing. The truth is when you stop for a light or whatever, you're resting briefly and then when you start, you're able to produce more power because you're slightly rested. So the zeros need to be there to tell a more complete picture. This debate kind of went away when normalized power came out, it's a better metric than a raw average. NP basically weighs very high power readings more heavily because those are more stressful on your body. NP tries to predict what your average power would have been on a perfectly flat, windless course, if your cadence and torque were identical on every pedal stroke.

    RWGPS shows you did 203 watts without the zeros and 198 w with.

    Garmin agrees at 198 w.

    Strava is the odd man out. I think what's going on is that Strava has their own weighted average formula, sort of like a suffer score for power, to compete with NP. I could be wrong, that's just my guess. Another possibility is they're filtering and smoothing the data somehow. It's odd that Strava thinks you did less work than your file says; 472 kJ vs 462.

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