May 24, 2026

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:02]Oh god, that was I was a broken man, but I have the numbers to prove that I wasn't faking it. So, as a sports nutritionist and exercise physiologist, I wanted to do some in the field testing to do a little experiment to assess the true metabolic cost of a tough hike and compare caloric expenditure across um a couple of different wearables. So, I'm using here a V2 mask or a portable V2 analyzer to assess oxygen consumption, aura ring for an activity tracker, and I have a polar chest strap on as well. I chose to do this experiment on Grind, which is a pretty iconic Vancouver hike. It's very, very difficult. It's an average of 28° incline. Um, pretty much like just a stair master all the way up. I was hoping to do it in under an hour. My hypothesis for this was that the wearables would overestimate my caloric expenditure compared to the true cost I was going to get when I was factoring in oxygen consumption. So, in terms of my numbers, I I did the hike in 54 minutes, which I was happy with. I had a peak V2 of 54, which was I was also happy with.

[00:01:11]It wasn't a true true max. I hit a max heart rate of 182, average 174 for the 54 minutes. Had a well-deserved beer and hot dog at the top. Some grizzly bears there for good measure. And in terms of calorie expenditure, the V2 Master had me just over 1,000 calories. Polar chest strap had me at 927 and Aura Ring had me at 400 calories, which is 60% lower than the V2 Master, which is crazy. So, um, definitely some interesting information.

[00:01:42]Would I do it again? Probably not.