Howdy,

Brand new to this forum though I have been reading it off and on for a long time. I was also inspired by John to get off my butt and get into shape.
My quick introduction is that I'm an IT administrator, and was tired of being heavy (everyone says I was never fat, just "stout") At any rate, my aunt and uncle got me into cycling.
When I first started, I couldn't go far at all. I'm in Bavaria (Germany) and it's a pretty hilly/mountainous region around here. Apparantly this area is huge in cycling (which I can easily believe because I see tons of cyclists everywhere) and it's very populer.

So I started out a basic shorts and t-shirt type cyclist.. as a hobby, to see if I could burn some calories.

Now I'm a full-fledged cyclist and now bike 33 miles (53 km) almost everyday.
(Activity log at the end of this post.)

I've heard cycling is one of the most cardiovascular intensive sports, and because of it's zero-impact nature, one can really burn A LOT of calories.

I've read in here that most people do 30-45 minutes on an indoor bike.. and I average from 1 hour, 45 minutes to 2 hours climbing hills and even mountains (like Taubenberg here in lower Bavaria)
The course I take daily (not truly daily, check my logs, but basically as often as I get the chance) is reknowned for its difficulty, and the area I go in and out of is called the "Devil's Ditch"
I can't give any hill percentages unfortunately, but I can say it's a pretty killer route, and I've taken other friends who are in seemingly excellent shape, and they always walk up these hills.

So the question is:

About how many calories would I burn biking this distance?

I know it's a wide open question, but I've been told that I burn a lot more than a normal person with similar activity, simply because I go so far. I figured I would ask some of you fitness guru's about this. :)

Thanks in advance, and this community rocks. Very open, honest and you guys never insult anyone. Perfect.

-Rooster

Edit: Forgot the logs! Oh, and I forgot to mention that I have lost 34.6 pounds in 2 months. Is this too fast?

Logs: http://sweb.uky.edu/~sdgrea0/activity

When I bike 27-34 kph, I burn roughly 900 k cal an hour...so on my bikingdays I easily burn 4500 k cal

That's on the road with a competition model MTB. 34lbs in 2 months is a shitload, so be careful that you don't burn a lot of musclemass as well.

if you burn 1500 k cal a day when you bike, you have to eat at least 3200 k cal...and that's a lot...

if your going to be biking that much, you gotta eat to support it!, and make sure you get tons of good rest! also it would be good if you threw in some weights, just to help sustain your LBM

1. Get a cyclocomputer
2. Get a heartrate monitor
3. Visit bicycling.com or a site run by Chris Carmicheal, Lance Armstrongs trainer, called trainright.com.
That should hellp you.

good luck

Thanks! I found an excellent calorie burning calculator at www.bicycling.com

I burn a little over 2000 calories in 2 hours of cycling!

I'm 6'5" and weigh 216 pounds.. which means on top of cycling and normal caloric burn, I have to eat somewhere around 3800 calories a day to maintain my current weight.

HOLY CRAP!

So, technically speaking, my HMR is something like 2600 calories for my size and weight, and adding calorie burn from cycling, I burn a little over 2000 calories.

So does this mean, if I want to lose weight safely and effectively, I should eat MORE than 2600 calories and less than 3800 a day?

Still trying to get all this under my hat. :)

I've lost so much weight by simply eating "enough" (until I felt full) and biking like crazy.. but now I think I've plateau'd and need to change up somewhere.

www.bikejournal.com


Good site for tracking mileage, time, etc.

Just curious, how are you connected with UK? I noticed your info has the uky.edu suffix.

Was a student there. Now I'm in Germany working full time for an engineering firm.

Edit: Thanks for that site. Perfect! Unfortunately I haven't been recording all the things I'm now recording, so I guess I'll have to start fresh with that site, and leave off the last 2 months I have in hand written logs. :)

Thanks again!

-The Rooster

Bikejournal allows you to back date, although, I just started anew. I graduated UK in 1997 (EE). Keep pedalling :D