Cycling UK Forum

I assumed anyone touring like this would be using a Garmin but she has a phone and uses "Komoot" whatever that is. I've heard of it but not sure what it does. The issue with that is you need your phone plugged in (like Sarah Bridgewater does).

Is Komoot better than a Garmin on these sorts of trips? Komoot does have voice navigation which is something not on a Garmin, at least my Edge 1030 Plus doesn't have it so I guess none do.

I could never do what this girl is doing, I'm just too scatterbrained. But then I have seen her do quite a lot of U turns in the 3 or 4 vids I've skipped through. I'm more interested in all the equipment she's using to do the tour. I did see a bit where she shows the packed tent on camera and it was a "Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL2" - not cheap are they! That tent is over £500.

I remember using eBay 20 years ago and the fees were only 3% back then. As pointed out above they are now getting close to 13%. People defending it argue that auction houses charge far more, but fail to acknowledge that there's a lot more cost in doing that, compared to hosting one web page like eBay does when you sell something. eBay is worth over £20 Billion so they sort of are making money lol

It's wrong a great deal. I use it for working out Powershell stuff and Excel formulas and it can take 50 attempts before it works. A lot of the time I have to tell it not to include a bit of code because it's already tried it. It's far from intelligent really.

On the other hand there's countless batch files and spreadsheets that would have been impossible without it, like my latest dieting package thing that tells me an end date for the diet. (Jan next year because I keep drinking wine).

More from football:

"They've downed tools" (when players want their manager sacked so they stop playing at the level they can)
"We want the best in class" (Football Director, CEO etc, when appointing these types)
"There will be limbs" (not even sure what this means, people celebrating waving arms around maybe)

Loads of people on here probably tour around different countries but for some reason this girl really got my attention.

She only seems about 18 or 20 years old, from Canada and is going solo. Today or one of these days, is her last day in the UK before she heads off to Greece. Today was especially interesting because she was in Manchester, my home city. Apart from how cute she is, if I put that aside, it's amazing to me the bravery and spirit she has.

I've been addicted to watching these videos, albeit skipping through because they are 8 to 12 hours long, but she's just persevering with it. One that got me was the very first day in the UK she did, when she went into a random Spar and got talking to another woman, that said don't bother with the campsite, I have got a spare room, so she stayed there for the night. Towards the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gcKsGhRg2Y

How many other people are out there doing this. I just find it amazing. Here I am not wanting to go out for a ride on my eBike because "It's a bit windy" and she's there probably weighing 100lbs on a bike weighing 100lbs just taking on everything that's thrown at her!

I often wonder where these people get their money from and while she only ever has about 10 or 20 people watching on YouTube, she does have 900+ watching on Twitch. I guess they live stream it all and the donations they get continually fund their expedition, but she's quite an inspiration.

I laughed at her bike to be honest, I think she's got pink plastic (flat) pedals. Maybe if she was 50 not 20 then OK things might be different, but it's that inexperience she has while doing it all anyway, I really admire. I wish it was me out there doing this stuff but I'd not have a clue.

There's days dieting I go on my bike just so I can get away with eating more I mean I'm trying to have a deficit of around 1,000 cals per day, eating about 1140 cals per day. That's tough, but do an hour on the bike and I can eat 1640 cals. My problem is drinking wine (even a little bit here and there) is messing up the diet. Drinking a few glasses of wine every other day makes a 6 month weight loss plan suddenly turn into 9 months. There's an absurd amount of calories in alcohol.

I looked through my saved Garmin rides, only about 6 were done on the eBike with a HR monitor, but I found something quite surprising... my average HR on those rides was considerably higher than it is on the indoor trainer! Yes higher. That means for every minute on the eBike I am burning slightly more calories than each minute indoors. Weird huh.

Average indoors: 149 BPM.
Average on eBike: 162 BPM.

My guess is that after doing those 40 rides on the indoor trainer (after months of not cycling at all) my HR is dropping because I'm getting fitter, but I don't know that for sure and need to do some rides on the eBike now to see what the HR comes out to. Maybe a lot of this is because I nearly always go up hills on the eBike, whereas on the indoor trainer I'm more likely to avoid such rides (so often).

Only a few rides on the indoor trainer even get close to that 162 BPM eBike average and the cals burned per minute of those, averages out to 8.1 cals per minute. That's close enough to the 8.076 I was already using, so I think it should work.

I might be going further in less time on the eBike, but comparing 1 minute indoors Vs 1 minute on the eBike the calories burned per minute is pretty much the same, so it works if it's simply based on time (not miles, or distance, or whatever else).

Everyone will burn different amounts I guess but for me multiplying minutes by 8.1 seems to work for a rough guess at cals burned.

Last post edited.

I'm burning 8.076 calories per minute on the indoor trainer, using HR to work it out, over 40 rides.

Average HR of all those rides: 149 BPM.

Now I just need to get out on the eBike and keep tabs on the HR. If it ends up averaging the same, I can just multiply minutes riding by 8.076 to get calories burned. If the HR average comes out much lower or much higher than 149 then... more faffing will ensue but I'll work out a way to adjust it for the eBike.

Cheers folks. I had another think this morning and since I have 40 rides logged in this spreadsheet/diary thing done on the indoor trainer, I can maybe figure something out using the ride time, average heartrate and calories burned, to see if there's even a remote pattern to it, with the final answer being the overall average calories burned per minute (averaging all the heartrates). It makes sense in my mind but I'll see what's what when I try to work it out.

I'll come back in 8 hours when Chat GPT has given me 200 wrong answers and the 201st is correct.

EDIT: That didn't take too long.

Average of all calories burned per minute (at all average heart rates) over all 40 rides = 8.076 calories per minute.

So perhaps I can do an eBike ride and simply multiply the minutes on the bike by 8.076 to roughly get calories burned.

60 mins * 8.076 cals per minute = 485 calories.

That's quite close to the 500 cals per hour I originally estimated up the thread ^

On my longest ride (Snake Pass and back, indoors though!) it was a 2h 36m ride with average HR 153 and cals burned: 1174. That ride in isolation comes out to 7.52 cals per minute burned, so I think this seems to be showing that the longer you're riding, the calories burned per minute will drop slightly, in my case from about 8.1 to about 7.5. All very interesting hmmmm.

If I go on my eBike and find my overall average heart rate isn't close to what it is on the indoor trainer then all of this means nothing. The thing is I reckon they will be similar. An eBike assists, but that doesn't mean I'm not assisting it at about the same levels as I normally would cycle. My average HR over all 40 rides is 149 BPM. All I have to do then, is do some eBike rides and see what the HR ends up averaging out to.

Some figures don't really correlate, but I suppose some days it just takes a higher heart rate to go the same speed, due to being tired, having a hangover, or whatever. A cup of coffee and blast on my eCig before or while riding, will add BPM to the HR.

Here's the 5 lowest and 5 highest heart rates and what cals were burned:

Lowest HR: 133 (Cals per minute: 8.22) ---> HR/CPM = 16.17
2nd Lowest: 138 (Cals per minute: 7.20) ---> HR/CPM = 19.17
3rd Lowest: 139 (Cals per minute: 7.83) ---> HR/CPM = 17.76
4th Lowest: 139 (Cals per minute: 7.83) ---> HR/CPM = 17.76
5th Lowest: 140 (Cals per minute: 7.28) ---> HR/CPM = 19.50

Highest HR: 173 (Cals per minute: 6.59) ---> HR/CPM = 26.25
2nd Lowest: 161 (Cals per minute: 8.60) ---> HR/CPM = 18.73
3rd Lowest: 159 (Cals per minute: 8.49) ---> HR/CPM = 18.72
4th Lowest: 159 (Cals per minute: 8.49) ---> HR/CPM = 18.72
5th Lowest: 158 (Cals per minute: 7.61) ---> HR/CPM = 20.76

Ignoring the 1st lowest and highest (because those would probably be really short test rides or, up some 15% hill for hardly any time) then those HR/CPM figures aren't that far from each other on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th lowest and highest.

The low HR/CPM averages to 18.55
The high HR/CPM averages to 19.23

Not that much difference.

On rides at the lower heartrates, it's taking 18.55 BPM of heartrate per 1 calorie burned per minute.
On rides at the higher heartrates, it's taking 19.23 BPM of heartrate per 1 calorie burned per minute.

Averaging those two it's 18.9 but this is getting a bit silly now.

For dieting purposes, maybe the best bet is to go somewhere between 7.5 and 8.1 and just multiply the minutes by 7.8 to get calories burned - assuming my average HR is 149 on the eBike like it is on the indoor trainer.

The end.

Sorry to revive a 2021 thread but I was just wondering about this myself.

If I do a hilly ride (1000ft of ascent) for an hour on my Wahoo Kickr, I burn about 500 cals according to my Garmin, which I am guessing would be more accurate than using a smart watch (which can be way off). The Watts I put in are known and within 1% or 2%, weight, male, age etc is all there so I think it's probably somewhat accurate.

If I go out on my eBike and ride that exact same course, I'd be faster and the Garmin will say I burned more calories, or would it? Let's say I ride for 60 mins at 10 MPH on the trainer indoors and I burn 500 cals. If I am on the eBike and average 15 MPH then that same ride is done in 40 mins, but I'm exercising for 20 mins less, despite going the same distance, so surely cutting those 20 mins off doesn't make this quite so straightforward?

It's tough to know. I don't feel like I put in even half the effort on my eBike as I do indoors on the Kickr. I think I might just halve it - whatever the eBike calories burned says - halve it. Or maybe 40%.

If you're dieting then "pretending" you burned less calories is of course going to help as opposed to overestimating it and binging on that chocolate éclair you technically shouldn't be eating in reality!

Heart Rate

If there's any way to work it out based on average heart rate then we can simply ignore whether a motor is used or not. I asked Chat GPT and it said at an average heart rate of 153 BPM I'd burn 3,250 calories in 1 hour. That's 6.5 times more than I really burn. Maybe the equation can be used if it's divided by 6.5 I don't know.

What goes up must come down. I thought it would pan out to be roughly similar, but thinking about my own rides, it is lower on hilly rides. I'd probably need to multiply my hilly average speed by 1.25 to get a rough idea of what it would be on the flat.

briansnail wrote: ↑30 Mar 2024, 12:47pmSo what would issue would you like them to support.If they want to get your vote?

Fix potholes!

When I saw the title I thought it was terrifying single words. Mine would be "specificity". One day I had to say that about 50 times before I could say it.

It's a shame there's so few Decathlon stores in the UK.

I've heard tales of people driving 50+ miles there and 50+ miles back to buy a bike. What I noticed about Decathlon is, they attempt to put together a reasonably lightweight bike at a decent price and that seems to be why those 50+ mile journeys are done. I'm lucky enough to live within 3 miles of one (Stockport) but to be honest, unless you're after a complete bike, they are usually more expensive on individual bike parts. I bought a £299.99 "Triban 3" from there in 2012 (on the final day of the Tour de France that year - and it was an absolute ghost town in there - due to everyone watching the cycling including the staff!) That bike I consider a bargain for what it was. It was the same with the MTB I bought from there in 2010 "RockRider 6.2" that was £269.99 but it was more like a £500 bike, if the reviews are anything to go off. I still use that frame now on my Kickr smart trainer.

I wouldn't worry about the delays and just wait it out if you're waiting for an online order to be delivered. Yes it smacks of shoddy organization at their end, you feel like you're being made to look stupid, I get that, with them daft enough to not realizing people can order stuff that's out of stock, but honestly from my experiences with them, I'd let it slide.

I will always remember taking a "Stelvio" carbon fork into Decathlon that I bought from Planet-X (and they must have known they didn't stock it) and asking them to put a crown race on it... that takes 10 seconds... but most bike shops would charge something to do that like £5 or whatever. The (older) bike mechanic guy that handed the fork back to me after hammering on the crown race, just told me to forget about paying - he did it for free. I was just some random guy off the street that wandered in with a fork they didn't even sell me. These are the things you never forget about a bike shop, or "Workshop" as it's called in Decathlon. It looks all commercial if you walk into one, but there's a human heart still beating there!

It's annoying waiting for stuff to be done, but if it was me having these delays I wouldn't really care because of things like I just mentioned, from the past. They are a great bike shop. One I truly have respect for.

Another one the football channels will not stop saying this month: "Best in class"

Man United are recruiting the best in class. Are they really! Do you have to say it fifty billion times?

I found getting these tyres on, it seems to be mostly about really pressing it into the rim at the 6 o'clock position, then really pressing it in at 7 o'clock and 5 o'clock, then 8 o'clock and 4 o'clock etc. If it's not already seated fully at the bottom at the start, there's often no chance of getting it on. I also found it's only when they are brand new too, taking off and putting on ones that have been ridden for hundreds of miles is a lot easier.