Runtastic Mountain Bike and Road Bike Apps: Useful?

Okay let's talk cross training a little.  One of the toughest parts of trying to track a bike ride is knowing how many calories you're burning.  There are quite a few apps on the market, but today I'm going to talk about Runtastic's Mountain Bike and Road Bike apps, which I've used extensively over the past month.

For starters, I tested the Mountain Bike app while riding an old BRC mountain bike with studded tires, and I tested the Road Bike app on my 2016 Kona Dew (a hybrid bike) also with studded tires.

If there's an obvious difference between the apps, it's in how they count burned calories.  Clearly my hulking BRC bike requires more effort to ride than my Kona bike, but twice as much?  Therein lies my first problem... I'm using a hybrid bike, which is clearly a more laborious ride than a road bike.  So I'm going to calculate my calorie burn at about 1.5x of the Road Bike read out.  There, problem solved... I hope.

Now, let's take a look at the interface of both apps (Road Bike is in red, Mountain Bike is in Brown):

So for roughly the same route, I appear to be much faster on my hybrid bike than on my mountain bike, yet, the calorie burn on my mountain bike is more profound.  Again, let's remember, we're estimating that I burned about 325 calories (not 217).

As with Runtastic's flagship app, the "voice coach" announces a number of different statistics (pace/time etc) every kilometre (or mile), which is pretty interesting if you're into challenging yourself to go faster.  The app is also pretty accurate with elevation, distances and speeds.

Where the apps fall short, however, is with heart rate tracking via Apple Watch.  Unlike Runtastic (running) for Apple Watch, you cannot begin and end bike rides via Apple Watch.  The upshot is that you need to use a separate heart rate monitor if you want to track your heart rate.  So far the only workaround I can think of is using the Activity app that comes with Apple Watch and using it to track your run as well--doing so will give you your average heart rate.  It's then a simple matter to find your maximum heart rate using the Health app on your iPhone.  Hopefully, though, Runtastic will make its cycling apps available to Apple Watch.

The apps are useful if you're training and need to keep an eye on your kilometres.  After all, if you want to fuel properly it really does help to know how much energy you need.  Of course, you can do this all without apps as well.  Your choice.