Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
How did we decide that burning more calories is what a better workout means?
Workouts for me vary but all are equally good for advancing towards my goals. For example, I did intervals yesterday, covered around 50km and it included 4x intervals up a 9% gradient of around a 1km stretch of road. Calories burned, a little over 1100. On Saturday I did a 106km ride, 1600m climbing, burned 2230 calories.
The interval training takes me longer to recover from than the greater calorie burner due to the intensity and effect on my legs from the sustained full gas efforts. Both great workouts. Different training. Today I'm soon going to do a ride focussing upon maintaining a good average (for me) circa 33/34km/h on a lumpy route and it'll burn a similar number of calories as the slow Zone 1/2 ride that I'll do on Thursday with a friend due to today's ride being shorter. Yet...if all I did was the longer, easier calorie burners, I'd not win any races. Different workout regimes for different goals - racing, fitness, weight loss. All good.