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Comment by nradov

3 years ago

Color me skeptical. In order to burn 1000 kcal in 60 minutes a cyclist would have to sustain a power output of about 280 W. Do you have a calibrated power meter, or are you going by the "vanity" calories displayed by most stationary bikes?

There are certainly plenty of trained cyclists who can maintain that power output, but I've never seen anyone reach that level after only 3 months. If you really did that then you're an extreme genetic outlier with an unusually fast training response.

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nradov

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throwaway09223  3 years ago

I don't know, actually. I'll check it out later today. I do know my heart rate is around 150-160 throughout.

I did a lot of cycling in my 20s and while I'm at least a decade out of shape I'm sure I'm relying a lot on past training.

  • nradov  3 years ago

    High aerobic fitness evaporates pretty quickly. The training you did a decade ago will not carry over to today. However, there are a few genetic outliers who can quickly build up a high level of fitness with just a short training program. You could be one of them, but it's more likely you're just getting bad data.

    Absolute heart rate doesn't tell us much about calorie consumption because there's a huge variation between individuals. If we know the athlete's size, sex, and threshold heart rate then we can start to make some kind of estimate. But to get an accurate number it really takes a properly calibrated power meter (or more complex lab tests involving exhaled gas measurement).