calorie counter

[gvcormac]

One is a equally good measure of external output as watts that can also be used with a huge number of assumptions to give food intake vs external output with so much error range (even weight adjusted) that it's useless for anything except rough magnitudes and motivation. (Calories) [/i]

People should use whatever metric they want. They all work the same.

No. Pace and Calories both include a time component. Pace is non-linear with power, so average pace does not tell you how much work was done. Calories, as I've noted, give you a bonus of 150 Cal/Hr just for time spent on the machine. So neither pace nor Calories is proportional to the work you do.

Sure, none of them account properly for wasted mechanical or metabolic energy. But if you're trying to measure and improve the total amount of work done, you can use watts*time or Calories-(150*time). Pace (or any other time/distance ratio) not so much.

[Tsnor]

No. Pace and Calories both include a time component.

Agree.

Pace is non-linear with power, so average pace does not tell you how much work was done.

Agree.

Calories, as I've noted, give you a bonus of 150 Cal/Hr just for time spent on the machine. So neither pace nor Calories is proportional to the work you do.

Agree conceptually, but not sure where you get the 150. C2 adds 300.

But if you're trying to measure and improve the total amount of work done, you can use watts*time or Calories-(150*time). Pace (or any other time/distance ratio) not so much.

Totally not following you.

All of the reported numbers and numbers like watts*time need context to be useful for either measuring or training.

For example how would you use Watts*time without separately knowing duration? Compare 300 watts times 7 minutes (a really fast 2K) to 100 watts times 21 minutes (a really short long/slow). They are numerically the same (300*7=100*21) but for training purposes they are not the same. No way you can "measure and improve the total amount of work done" or build a training plan if you only know watt*mins.

All of the reported numbers (splits, watts, calories) with context give you everything you need to build a training plan and improve your performance and measure your improved performance. They are all the same in the sense that you use them the same way to control your training. None of them accurately measure total work done. All of them show changes nicely and let you do repeatable workouts and see changed results.

[gvcormac]

Calories, as I've noted, give you a bonus of 150 Cal/Hr just for time spent on the machine. So neither pace nor Calories is proportional to the work you do.

Agree conceptually, but not sure where you get the 150. C2 adds 300.

My faulty memory. Thanks for correcting me.

But if you're trying to measure and improve the total amount of work done, you can use watts*time or Calories-(150*time). Pace (or any other time/distance ratio) not so much.

Totally not following you.

All of the reported numbers and numbers like watts*time need context to be useful for either measuring or training.

Sure, long and slow is not precisely the same thing as short and fast. But to the first order, amount of work done is a good indicator of overall effort. And if you usually do a similar time or a similar distance, it is even better.