Calories burned while hiking

Cookie_Monster

Anyone be able to suggest ballpark figures for calories burned per hour while hiking

Some variables:

Height: 6ft
Weight: 84 kg
Speed: 5.1 kph average
Terrain: Mixed up down and flat.

I dunno if that enough info to go on.

I was wondering about it while walking the white marked route around Glendalough yesterday, if anyone is familiar with it, it's marked as 9km and 3hrs 30 min to complete. I managed it in 1hr 45 running some of the boardwalk walk:)
I aim to be able to do it in under 1.5 hrs at some point

hunnymonster

It's very difficult to estimate these things with any accuracy but there are various guesstimate tables out there. One example I often used
http://www.nutribase.com/exercala.htm

height doesn't really matter, speed only matters in so far as you might change the movement as you get faster (i.e. swinging your arms wildly will obviously use more calories than holding them still so if you don't change your gait/style with speed the calories burned for a certain distance shouldn't change wildly).

Cookie_Monster

hunnymonster wrote: »

speed only matters in so far as you might change the movement as you get faster (i.e. swinging your arms wildly will obviously use more calories than holding them still so if you don't change your gait/style with speed the calories burned for a certain distance shouldn't change wildly).

Surely if you are hiking faster you heart rate will increase noticably and you'll use more energy?

IE, if i do the above mentioned route in 3h 30 without pushing myself in the slightest or i do it in half that time pushing myself quite a bit I use more energy no?

hunnymonster

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

IE, if i do the above mentioned route in 3h 30 without pushing myself in the slightest or i do it in half that time pushing myself quite a bit I use more energy no?

not really, because you are only exercising for half the time. Unless you change the actual moments, the calories burned to cover a certain distance are approximately the same regardless of the time it takes to cover the distance.
For example a movement that uses 400 kCal/hr done for 30 min = 200 kCal compared to a movement that uses 200 kCal/hr done for 60 min = 200 kCal.

Reyman

This is a complicated question and there was a post on it here lately.
HM has answered it to some extent. At a basic level if you travel faster you will burn more calories due the inefficiencies of swinging your arms and particularly higher leg lift. You will also have to combat an increased wind resistance.

So doing 5 miles at 10mph (30 mins) will involve a higher calorie consumption rate (note the word 'rate') If on the other hand you travel 5 miles at 5 mph (60 mins) your calorie consumption rate will be lower because you are more efficient. However you are travelling for longer and because it's over a longer period the total calorie consumption will be quite similar to the total calories consumed at 10mph. I.E. you have to keep the basal calorie consumption of your body functioning for an extra 30 minutes.