This stuff is hard.

[boyscout]

Ill start this by saying I'm not a very good rider. My technique is getting better, but i push very hard and rely on my fitness to pull me through. I am 44 years old, I weigh 177 pounds and I'm 6 feet tall. My max heart rate is 186, my resting heart rate is 46. So with all that said i wanted to share the heart rate data i gathered on Sunday from my race. Ill also say that this was the easiest enduro that i have done thus far ( Ive only done 6). This is total data collected, started about 2 minutes before 1 transfer section ended about 1 hour after getting off bike.

Total time of Data collection 5 hours 33 minutes
Average Heart Rate 125.
Max heart rate 172.
Minimum Heart rate 71
Total Calories Burned 3946.

To give some additional support to put things in perspective.
To burn 1 pound of fat is 3500 calories.
To run one mile is about 130 calories for me.

So for me riding an enduro would burn more calories than running a marathon.

p.s.-and my wife still doesn't feel sorry for me.
p.s.s -i would have lost a pound of fat had i not drank so much beer on the way home.

[HenrikSchmidt]

hi Boyscout.

It IS hard to ride Enduro, but I don't think you can calculate it that way, If you are measuring your heart rate while running, riding a bike or other kind of exercise, the pulse meter is calculating how many calories you're body is burning, from information based on your heart rate, time, speed, distance and altitude. but when you use your Pulse meter on any kind of extremesports, like Enduro, MX, Mountainbike or Skateboarding, where adrenalin is a big part of the game, you can't trust the calculation on the amount of burned calories, because adrenalin makes your heart beat faster, even without moving a muscle, and the pulse meter will "think" that you are moving and burning calories, but it's a false result, it's "only" the adrenalin is making your heart rate higher than normal..
try on your next race and check your heart rate when you are on the starting line ready to go, your pulse should be on "resting" but I'll bet you that it's much higher than your resting heart rate, because of the exitement and adrenalin in your body..
but sure, you are burning alot of calories in an endurorace, but unfortunately not as many as your pulse meter is telling you..

[boyscout]

Correct, all of these devices use an algorithm based on info that you input. I believe the margin for error is about +-10% no matter what your doing biking, running, skiing. I understand your premise but I don't believe Im running on adrenaline for 4+ hours. I am usually hyped up and a bit nervous at the beginning of the first two test sections, but after that i settle. Additionally adrenaline would peak my heart rate at the end of a long straight away where I'm going really fast, but i find my highest readings in the very slow technical sections. I used to question some of the reading i was getting as they were alarmingly high, but i have now used it while practicing and even bought a new digital heart rate monitor. Also i use gel on the chest strap against my skin to make sure i am getting good readings. So I don't believe it perfect, but its the best i can do right now. Im sure the algorithms for these devises are written for pure cardio such as running, I'm not sure how well that translates over to a total body muscle recruitment activity?

One more thing my resting heart rate was over 80 bpm for at least two hours into the drive home. And these numbers are very similar to the readings i get if i go hard on my mountain bicycle.

Im not sure what all this means but those are the numbers.

[HenrikSchmidt]

Can't say for sure, did not see your readings. But it's a thing we talked about and tested in our local mx club, and we all get different readings depending on which sport is monitored. Most of us only used the monitor while running/biking but were really surprised on the readings while riding mx, suddenly 40 year old guys with max heart rates on around 180 would get readings of heart rates on 200+ in a 15-20min practise session and they had burned the same amount of calories as if they had run 10Km.
Maybe in enduro the readings would be more correct than in mx, enduro is not that agressive because you need to save energy for the entire race, and there is not the same amount of adrenalin involved.
Are your readings from your racing not different from when you are running or biking?

[boyscout]

Ok so today it was 75 degrees and beautiful outside (kind of funny since it was a high of 37 sunday) so i decided to pop out and do a test on my road bicycle. I rode for 1 hour 15 minutes and after a 10 minute warm up i did a series of intervals that lasted between one minute and three minutes. Here are the results-
Total ride time 1:15
average hr 134
peak hr 183
total calories burned 1019

Here is what i noticed. When i am above 170 bpm on a bicycle my respiratory rate is very high much higher than i notice it being at the same heart rates on a motorcycle. SO I think Henrik is correct that adrenaline is a factor in my readings.

Henrik I've found really high readings as well until i started using lotion or gel on the chest strap. I think that the polyester type materials that we all wear now while working out and riding causes some erratic readings until you get a good sweat going.

Again not sure what this all means I'm just putting it out there so that hopefully together we can learn something from this all. I do however believe this should support our need to focus on pre race and during race nutrition the same way a bicyclist or runner would, because no doubt there is a huge calorie burn occurring.