Kilocal and Kilo joules

[fuel1970]

Hello, just starting to use my powertap. Question about calories burned. On my last couple of workouts, my powertap states that I did about 500kj of work. I read that a kJ =kcal. So for a 1.5 hour, pretty hard workout I only burned 500 calories??? I used a Garmin forerunner

[Lynda]

1kJ = 0.24 Calories (or more precisely 0.24 kilo calories).

A human body is about 22% efficient at pedaling a bike thus the rough estimate bandied around that it takes the human body 1 Calorie to produce 1kJ.

The studies that have estimated the efficiency of the human body at pedaling have been done on trainers in labs.

So this does not relate to mountain biking at all. More technical terrain, more hike-a-biking, less gears, more standing and upper body work

[fuel1970]

thanks for the reply….looking at the graph on my training peaks, I see that it was not really that hard of a workout. It was actually this past tuesday and I did a test. So, I warmed up for 20 minutes on the trainer and than went out and did a 20 minute time trail. Average Watts for that twenty minutes was 210. I am not sure how that compares to other sport racers. If it is really low, I guess I need to calibrate it. Not sure how to though.

[Lynda]

Use the Contact form on the banner menu bar to contact me and we can set up a time for a consult.

Cheers,

Lynda

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