Running Pace & Burning Calories

A runner's physique may lead anybody looking to believe that running can help you lose weight. Although that's not the whole story for losing weight, it's certainly true that running can contribute to your weight-loss goals. This is because running burns calories, and burning more calories than you eat is the basic physiological mechanism behind losing weight. How many calories running will burn depends in large part on how fast you're running.

Calorie Basics

The label "calorie" is used to measure energy the same way the label "kilometer" is used to measure distance. When you take in energy, your body uses that energy to fuel activities and processes. If you burn more calories than you take in, your body gets the energy it needs by burning fat cells. When you burn fat, you lose weight. It takes 3,500 calories worth of extra energy expenditure to burn away 1 pound of fat.

Running and Calories

The two most important factors in how many calories you burn while running are your body weight and the pace at which you're running. For example, a 155-pound person will burn about 700 calories running six miles in 60 minutes, and more than 1,100 calories running 10 miles in 60 minutes. A 205-pound person would burn about 930 and 1,500 calories running the same workouts. The faster you run, the more your heart rate accelerates and the more calories you burn per mile.

Aggregate Pace

If you're running intervals, or simply accelerating and slowing down due to hills or fatigue, you won't be running at a steady pace. In those cases, it's appropriate to calculate your calorie burn using your average pace and distance. Instead of tracking your exact distance and pace for each period, calculate your total distance and total time when looking up how many calories you burned. This won't be absolutely precise, but is close enough for anybody who's not a calorie researcher or elite athlete — and both of those people will have trained experts and specialized equipment to do the calculations.

Other Factors

Calorie counting is not an exact science, but a best-estimate art. Pace and body weight can give you a general idea of how many calories you burn — especially in comparison with other activities. However, other factors that affect your precise burn for a given workout range from your level of conditioning to when you last ate to the air temperature to your mood at the time.