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Old 05-01-24, 08:18 PM
  #12  
zacster
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Brooklyn NY
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Bikes: Kuota Kredo/Chorus, Trek 7000 commuter, Trek 8000 MTB and a few others

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Originally Posted by rm -rf

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But, the same ride uploaded to ridewithgps.com shows higher numbers:
kjoules = 434
calories=664. Seems high. I wonder how rwgps calculated this.
I use RWGPS as my main tracker and I can calculate the calories in a spreadsheet that matches their calculated value exactly. They use 25% as the human efficiency number, but when I plug your numbers in I get a much lower number for calories, 394. kjoules should always roughly equal calories as the .239 and 25 mostly cancel out. Something isn't right there.

B20×(B21+B22÷60)×60÷1000×.239006÷.25
Where
B20 = avg watts
B21 = Minutes
B22 = Seconds

The calc is a little convoluted as written only because I originally wrote it just for minutes, but then included the seconds for accuracy. It is Watts * (minutes + seconds/60) then times 60 again to get to seconds to get to joules. Divide by 1000 to get kJoules, then apply conversion to Calories and factor in human pedaling efficiency.
413 kJoules is right, but the Strava efficiency looks to be about 20%, where the RWGPS numbers you get use 15%. Is that number part of a setting somewhere that it could be so different? I don't remember that, I probably wouldn't have known what it was anyway as I've been using it for years an only recently looked into the calc.

Is your power accurate? Are you using a power meter or is it estimating power based on HR? When I ride my commuter bike without the power meter it uses HR to estimate calories and power and it is way off. In order for it to be closer to accurate you need VO2 Max.

Last edited by zacster; 05-01-24 at 08:34 PM.
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