Fun on Foot Running, Walking Blog

One figure we runners and walkers need to know is the number of calories our bodies burn while out on-foot. One reason it is important to many of us is the weight-loss factor. If I know that today’s run or walk burned more calories than I would intake by drinking a beer or eating a cookie, I shall feel no guilt about consuming a beer or cookie after the exercise.

However, for endurance athletes (including marathoners) the rate of calorie loss is important for another reason. It helps us know what carbs we need to store before and intake during a run, allowing us to better plan our race days.

The answer has always been a bit of a mystery to me, since there are so many calorie calculators on the web and even devices like treadmills tell me how many calories they think I burned. But, amazingly, these different sources of answers frequently disagree with each other. Furthermore, many of those calculators present their answers in an unhelpful way – for example, they will tell me (for my body weight) how many calories I would burn in 30 minutes of exercise running at 8 miles per hour. Unfortunately, I do not run in 30 minute segments and I do not think of running speeds as miles per hour.

But I do know my body weight and I do know the mile pace I run on every outing and I do know how far I go. The calorie-related figure I really need to know is how many calories I burn per mile. I decided to pin down that figure for different body weights for the paces we typically run or walk.

I have put together the table we need and included it in a new free article on our website at www.funonfoot.com/resources.html I recommend you read the full article since there are a few provisos around the final figures given, plus supporting information.

Use these easily memorized figures in planning your next endurance run.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.