athletes & calories

Over at this page on Visual.ly they've got a graphic on how many calories Olympic athletes burn; if it's still up, it should show below:

Well, where there are numbers, there is arithmetic. How many calories per second are they doing, over how long?

• Michael Phelps: 0:01:54, 35 calories, .307 cal/sec
• Gabby Douglas: 0:01:38, 23 calories, .235 cal/sec
• Usain Bolt: 0:00:19, 10 calories, .526 cal/sec
• Misty May-Treanor: 1:14:00, 1094 calories, .246 cal/sec
• Stephen Kiprotich: 2:08:00, 2600 calories, .339 cal/sec

While Bolt gets the ribbon for highest effort, my hat is off to May-Treanor, and especially Kiprotich, for sustained effort. I'm sure both athletes had peaks and valleys during their performances, but to sustain those levels of effort over those times is an achievement.

(And Gabby Douglas may seem like a slug in this comparison... but how would any of us compare in such a table?)