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The skinny on treadmills
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Wilkie - from the article: "you burn five calories for every litre of oxygen you consume" I'm not a scientist but I presume this is a statement of fact, so presumably they're hooked up to equipment measuring their oxygen consumption.
Interesting article. It's all making a bit more sense to me now. Given the very different biomechanical actions of walking and running (and therefore different forces involved) it would be a bit of a coincidence if the energy expenditure was the same for a given distance travelled. From the experiment in the article comparing calorie burn for running vs walking at different speeds it's fairly clear that efficiency of movement is key. Moraghan - I'd be interested to know if there are any studies on this but I'd be willing to bet that calorie burn / mile varies a great deal depending on running speed, with the lowest calorie burn being in a mid-range where a person's running is most efficient, probably relating closely to a person's easy to high-aerobic running intensities. At any slower speed (as Amby notes in the above study) a person has to artificially change their gait and therefore be less efficient, and at higher speeds there's too much effort required, and an associated loss of form.
I suspect ultra runners (Noakes??) would know a lot more about this than me.
When I said that speed didn't make much difference, I was only meaning comparing running speeds, not running and walking.
I believe it does actually make a bit of a difference, but not so significant.
Obviously running faster for the same time burns more energy, but doing it over the same distance makes only a little difference.
Incidentally we really should be talking about kilojoules rather than calories - we went metric quite a long time ago!
Much more useful is that, as near as damn it, when running you burn 10 cals per stone per mile. Obviously running efficiency, metabolism, etc all cause further variations from person to person, but weight is the most important factor, by far.
AND 10 per stone per mile is, luckily, very easy to calculate.
"you burn five calories for every litre of oxygen you consume"
Not very sure about the reliability of this statement. Surely it depends on the ratio of aerobic to anaerobic respiration going on.
Aerobic respiration releases loads more energy per molecules of glucose which could be used for running. Anaerobic respiration - the bit extra when we burn glucose without oxygen, releases only a bit of energy. It does however make lactic acid which is responsible for the oxygen debt where we have to breathe extra oxygen after exercise finishes to convert the lactic acid into carbon dioxide and water.
Consequently you would have to include this extra breathing when you finished in the calculation, but then you wouldn't really know how much was going into replacing the oxygen debt and how much was just being needed for normal body processes.
I'm sure I've seen this film Nick but can't think what it is.
Put me out of my misery please ...
...so to conclude:
Running = lots of cake can be consumed.
Walking = less cake can be consumed
Neither running nor walking = no cake consumption
*as for the film.......Lion King!
I like Candys calculation now - 10 calories per mile per stone. I shall use that in future rather than 100 calories a mile.
Philpub
I am reduced to finding a post I made on another forum with the figures with regards to burn at different running speeds. Here it is:
When you perform a continuous exercise, you apparently burn five calories for every liter of oxygen you consume. You will burn more calories at faster running speeds, according to US Army:
Running at 5 MPH burns .064 calories per minute per pound of body weight
Running at 6 MPH burns .079 calories per minute per pound of body weight
Running at 10 MPH burns .10 calories per minute per pound of body weight
Running at 12 MPH burns .13 calories per minute per pound of body weight
In "Energy Expenditure of Walking and Running," published last December in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, a group of Syracuse University researchers measured the actual calorie burn of 12 men while running and walking 1,600 meters (roughly a mile) on a treadmill. Result: The men burned an average of 124 calories while running, and just 88 while walking.
The University of Texas found that running at 50% of your maximum heart rate burned 7 cals per minute while the same group at 75% of their mhr burned twice that.
For the purposes of this discussion perhaps the last paragraph is most important.
You burn twice as many calories at the faster rate so after a mile you have burnt more overall even though you were running for less time at the faster rate.
The treadmills in the gym I use measure in metric or imperial - you can choose.
They do measure speed rather than pace, but it's not hard to work it out afterwards (which I do).
JM - could you provide a linky of those? (i CBA to look - plus imagine you have it at your fingertips!)
I can do the convert from kmh to mph......but I have been doing intervals on a treadie which measures in Kmh, and I know I want to 'target' 6:50 m/m (which I guess is about 8.7 mph).....but would be curious to know what m/m I am doing when doing other speeds....like 16.5 - 17kmh.
I use a treadmill all year round, the modern machines are excellent. The one I use can get you around a 10k in 30mins, considering my best time 30 years ago was 31:27, it's more than enough for me.
I don't run more than 10k on it mind as I find it kinda boring especially as the New Forest is just over the road form the sports centre, but if the forest is under water or it's raining out I always head for the gym.
I also use it for speed work, my coach has given me a session and it works really well for me, but I guess it's each to his own.
Simmo
Nick L to go from Kmph to min per mile you "simply" work out 5/8 (converts from Kmph to mph) then divide 60 by the answer. I say "simply" in case trying to do it in your head, which is what I spend most my ttready runs doing as it's a good distraction!
The answer you get gives you in fractions of minutes rather than mins
econds but is fairly easy to convert:
.1 = 6 secs
.2=12 sec
.25 = 15 secs
.3=18 secs .
.4=24 secs
.5=30 secs and so on.
Thus 16.5 Kmph = 10.3125 mph = 5.81818181818181818 min per mile or 5:49 per mile
Cheers JM.
I can sit at 16 - 16.5 kmh for some time. Been doing some 4 min fast, 1 min recovery at increasing paces, starting at 15...going up in 0.5kmh.
Will look myself later.