An easy bike ride compared to an easy swim

Yeah yeah, i'm talking about swimming an awful lot but that is because it is rather new to me. I did some swimming in my youth competitively but I hadn't really thought about it being a useful form of exercise because it never really felt that hard to me.

When I am doing my laps in the pool my heart rate doesn't factor into the equation and I can only guess that this has to do with the limitations of my own sport watch. Or maybe the laser thing on the back of the watch face doesn't work underwater. I don't know for sure but I do know that a session in the pool doesn't really feel as tough as a run or even a dead sprint on a bicycle, so I am kind of doubting the readouts where it tells me that i am burning 500 calories in 30 minutes of what I consider to be rather relaxed swimming.

Cycling on the other hand, I feel like that is largely up to the person whether or not that is going to be a tough workout.

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The other day I went out for a mid-day cycle which is realy the only time of day that I can go and do that in the city I live in without there being 100,000 other people getting in the way. So my own ability to muster the strength to do a long ride is hindered by the sun for sure. However, I did a pretty good cycle for about an hour yesterday anyway and here are the results.

Now while I wasn't exactly trying to go as fast as I could at all times I did feel as though I was pushing myself and I wasn't being lazy unless a strong wind came by and forced me to step down gears. My heart rate stayed in the aerobic or aerobic plus portion for the entire ride as well.

I don't know what my heart rate is while I am swimming because like I said, i can't get that information while underwater for some reason. I have stopped for a little while during my swims though and it certainly didn't feel like a near 150BPM sort of experience.

So I am a bit curious how it is that over an hour of cycling burns fewer calories than 30 minutes of swimming? I don't think it does. I don't feel like this can be true.

I get that swimming is whole body and cycling is almost exclusively legs, but does it really make that much of a difference?

I would really like to find better details on this but since the internet is just filled with adverts disguised as genuine information, this is actually kind of difficult to find.

_{not breaking any speed records but this is pretty fast considering where I am doing this}

I suppose I could also stop splitting hairs and just do both of them as well. Since I don't find either one of them to be terribly taxing there really isn't anything stopping me from doing an hour cycle and turn that into a journey to the lap pool that I pay a membership for. The only reason why I am curious about this is because the pool membership is actually quite expensive and I think I may actually be tricking myself into thinking it is more beneficial than it actually is. I already own the bike and the bike paths in the city are free of charge. Economically speaking, if cycling isnt the "wonder drug" i have made it out to be in my head, there isn't much reason to keep it in the rotation... if that makes sense.

Got any insight into any of this folks?