Calorie Counting

So while I’m out on the road, I try to keep myself reasonably in shape. At home, I have volleyball and the like to keep me active, but in a hotel room in Princeton, NJ? Not so good.
Fortunately, I can bring my bicycle with me, and I’ve worked out a schedule where I can spend 8-9 hours in the office, hop on the bike, ride for an hour or two, and have a nice satisfying wind-down dinner then a shower at night. Works out pretty durned well, but I was curious -how- well it was working.
At yesterday’s cohousing meeting, some helpful person had brought some ultra-tasty chocolate cake. I’ve cut back my sweets intake enormously in the last year, but the cake arrived while I was hungry. I had a slice. That’s more than I usually have (I try to have a couple bites – just to get the mmmm yummy taste – this time I downed a whole slice). Felt sort of guilty about it. “Hmm, that was probably about 400-450 calories worth of food there. I wonder if I worked that off riding today?”
The net is FULL of calorie counters. Most of them seem to be pretty much garbage, with a lot of commentary making vague comparisons about which is better for you, how much time you’re spending, etc. I finally tracked down a decent calculator that takes into account my own weight, how vigorous I was riding, and how long I was on the road. Tonight I rode about fifteen miles, and according to the calorie calculator on WebMD.com, that means I burned a little over 800 calories in my ride. That feels about right, it was a decent length ride, I could feel my heart rate up, I was sweating, and I feel a little tired, but not wiped out afterwards.
I think I offset the cake, and then some, which is what I wanted to do!
Now I’m back in my room, getting some work done, and soon I’ll snuggle into bed. I’ve found a couple possible pickup volleyball games for tomorrow night nearby, we’ll see if anything comes from it.