Q. I am looking for information. I currently bike 15 to 20 miles a day on my recumbent trike. Here in Wisconsin, winter is fast approaching and I will have to give up my biking until spring. To maintain my current exercise level, how long or how far do I need to walk each day? Is there a formula available that I can use?   Thank you for your help in this matter.
Ed Heuer
Port Edwards, WI

Ed,
I looked around for a formula, and I’ve got your question out to a couple of people who aren’t as math-challenged as I am. But I thought of a way to get a quick and dirty estimate: use one of the online calculators that figure calories burned, and compare entries for bicycling and walking.

For example, I used the calorie calculator at:
http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi
First, I had to indicate my svelte body weight of 200 lbs. (Okay, it’s a little higher than that, but I have my goals, too.)

This particular calculator has already figured the activities, and you indicate how many minutes you’re going to be doing them. So I estimated that you were bicycling between 12 and 14 mph for 60 minutes, just to get a baseline. The calculator came back with:

Bicycling 12-14 mph for 60 minutes:  792 Activity Calories burned

Then I entered a couple of numbers for walking 4 miles per hour: It turns out that if you walk for 100 minutes at 4mph, you burn about the same number of calories:

Walking 4 mph for 100 minutes: 780 Activity Calories burned

So, 100 minutes (nearly 2 hours) of walking at 4mph is equivalent to one hour of bicycling at 12-14mph in terms of calories burned (if you weigh about 200 pounds). That would be one way to get at this…use one of these on-line calculators to compare caloric burn for the two activities, using your own weight, and the amount of time you spend on the bicycle doing your 15-20 miles each day.

I’ll let you know if I get any other feedback on this.

Gary