Depends on the elevation gains in your 100km ride but I think that 3,300kcal for a 100km/4h ride is generous.
800kcal/hr is hard work and keeping that up for 4h is even harder. 25kph does not sound like 800kcal/hr unless there was some reasonable elevation gains. I’d expect at least 1000m elevation gain over that 100km for those numbers to at least approach something sensible. If it was a flatter ride than that then Strava is just lying to you.
But, yes, long distance cycling is an awesome way of burning calories. When I used to do Brevet/Audax riding I was the closest to my old teenage weight as I have been in the last ~30 years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Total_powe..., https://www.road-bike.co.uk/articles/cycling-power.php [2] https://www.quora.com/How-efficient-is-the-human-body-at-con...
Being someone who has a power meter, I can say that strava's estimates over a long time period aren't that terrible, but if you're riding in a group, or there was a some wind, or a million other reasons they can be absolutely miles out.
That's hardly strava's fault, it's more about what's actually possible with an estimate.
What is completely made up and should be ignored is the calorie burn estimates you get from gym equipment.
Strava’s calorie estimation is awful.
> I’d expect at least 1000m elevation gain over that 100km
1% average grade is pretty mild. I'd bet OP did at least 3000m to get those numbers
And one doesn't have to do 100km all at once. A 10km commute each way over a 5 day workweek is a much less intimidating prospect.
Now I live in America need a car :(
It could depend on how you define "almost 100%" of course. There's a big difference between 5% and 0.001%.
NB nobody would be able to do this without ingesting a substantial amount of food during. If you didn't start eating hourly after about 1-2 hours in, you'll "bonk" or run out of glycogen.
Cycling at 15mph on flat ground is pretty easy. If you can do that for an hour, and can progress at 10% increase in riding time week over week (pretty reasonable for someone who is still gaining fitness from "nothing"), you'll be doing four hour rides after just 16 weeks.
Two factors in your statement that lead me to believe 32oz is still a boat load. What's median and 75th percentile? I imagine the distribution here is non linear across the soda drinking population.
16oz of store-bought soda is not the same as 16oz of restaurant soda, at least 30% of which would be ice.
I wouldn't trust Gallup to report with nuance.