Jim, I noticed the same thing with a Lifecycle I used to ride. Although kcal/h and watts both measure power, they differed on the Lifecycle by a large factor (something like a factor of 3 or 4). I believe that watts was the actual output power you produced, and calories related to how much energy your body used.
A search for French language web pages with nutritional web pages suggests that usage both kJ and kcal are in common use in France. A workbook for school children was mostly in kJ. Other pages had everything dual-labeled. I recall buying candy bars in France labeled in kJ only. John On Sunday 11 January 2004 13:00, James Frysinger wrote: > My wife and I just got back from the local fitness center which we recently > joined. Today I used a rowing machine for the first time and noted a couple > of interesting features. > > One of the display options on the LCD readout is time to row 500 m. Why 500 > m, I wonder. Is that a standard race length for crew meets. (You know the > kind---shells, oars, obnoxious helmsman.) I think it also displays the > cumulative distance rowed in meters. > > Another display option provides power output in watts. I was averaging 50 W > today in my warm-up prelude to using the Nautilus machines, since I was not > trying to set any records. My output varied from 40 W to 60 W and never > went any higher, so rumors that I'm on a par with a dim bulb are probably > true. > > Somewhere in all those displays was one that read out in calories per > whatever. On a machine that is so neatly metric, why calories? Aren't we > ready for joules? > > Jim
