Sy Reene

Of course miles and time are part of most apps' logging capabilities, but since virtual training isn't actual miles, seems it could make more sense to track month over month or year-over-year kilojoules or calories on indoor trainers?

spelger

Don't know but I was thinking about this as a goal for the year.

and I'm not starting out the year too well...beer and cheese. I did shovel about a ton of snow today. Had 12" of heavy wet stuff come down yesterday. Two of my trees broke.

Buzzkill53120

I ride indoor on my Wahoo trainer using Zwift. I have Zwift send all my ride data to my Garmin Connect account. From Garmin Connect you can have it create a CSV file (easily imported into any spreadsheet). The file contains more data than you'll ever need. If you're just interested in just recording calories or power, you can probably just record the ride report data.

I don't know if you even need a Garmin device to use their Connect app, but its worth a shot.

dmanthree

Zwift tracks calories and reports progress in "pizza slices." It also displays the calorie count in the ride summary on their site.

Black wallnut 

Garmin Connect gives a weekly cumulative calorie number. I don't see a way to get longer term than weekly. You will find it under "health stats"

Sy Reene

Yeah, thinking ongoing annual counters. I see Ride wGPS does this for calories on their frontpage dashboard, able to click back and see each calendar year's tally. Unfortunately, I dont use RWGPS for indoor activities :-(
I guess a bit surprised Strava doesn't seemingly have easy way to see totaled numbers by a setting a time period on other metrics (like kJ, Calories, or even their own "Relative Effort").. unless I'm missing something obvious.

Black wallnut 

Seems like a good feature request to me. For those of us that have top level purpose of cycling being fitness or well ness it seems like a much more important metric than most already displayed.

PeteHski

Interesting idea. But what are you actually going to do with the data?

People who are interested in actively managing their training load long term tend to use metrics like CTL (Chronic Training Load). Strava generates a similar training load graph, showing your training load over time (depicted as a Fitness/Freshness graph). I find that sort of data far more useful than accumulated totals.

Black wallnut 

Pretty sure the OP explains the use. A more accurate metric to quantify trainer time with a meaningful metric. Miles and time are commonly used but don't really tell much of the story. Strava fitness/freshness hasn't proved to be useful to me at all. Plus it is not really a tabulation of any data. FIFY

PeteHski

So how come nobody actually appears to use this "meaningful" metric? Most people who are interested in quantifying their trainer time with a meaningful metric use some form of CTL tracking. That's not to say this wouldn't be of some minor interest. I just don't see what you would actually do with it in practice - over and above say totalling up your virtual mileage and vertical feet climbed.

Anyway I was just asking the OP what their reasoning was for tracking total energy expenditure. Is that okay with you?

Black wallnut 

I don't jump to the conclusion that what I believe is what most others believe. I challenge others that seem to think the opposite. The fact that Sy wishes there was an app that tracked a given metric is sufficient for me to agree, yeah that could be useful, maybe just to him, maybe to him and I. 3500 calories expended is one pound. Without counting caloric intake knowing what you are burning can help folks manage their weight. Just one possible use of a metric that actually equates to real world data.

PeteHski

There are dozens of Apps out there tracking daily calorie intake/expenditure on the fly. They just don't tend to bother totalling it all up over weeks, months and years. I currently use Fitbit for checking my calorie in/out balance as I happen to wear one of their trackers. In my experience it seems pretty accurate in that I can hit my weight targets when training for specific events that may benefit from a weight loss i.e. Alpine climbing.