Carlton green wrote: ↑27 Jun 2022, 4:57pm
IIRC the comment was ‘tongue in cheek’. I’m of the view that if you use a motor without really needing to then to some extent you cheat yourself of the exercise and of course there’s the expense and the additional weight to consider too - you need the motor to help you move all the extra weight. If you ride with (motor less) others then you (with motor) arguably have an unfair advantage, cheating if someone cares to call it that.
You've got that all wrong, you have. Yes.
I 've been using a motor recently (for about 2 months now) although I don't need it. The effects so far seem to be to make me try even harder, as the ladywife on her e-bike turns up the power even more than heretofore, so I occasionally have to have a bit of power too. But I try not to. On a longer ride she'll use up 9/10ths of her battery whilst I'll use only 1/10th of mine. And she weighs 4 stone less than I do!
The nature of the e-motor is such that you only get power out of it if you input power at the pedals yourself. The motor can be set so that you have to input the full 250 watts of your own power to get the full 250 watts out of the e-motor power. Otherwise you get power on a sliding scale (125 watts from me, only 40 watts from the motor, in the least-help setting, for example).
In fact, all the settings on mine are such that I have to put in 180 - 250 watts to get 75, 150 or 180 watts, respectively, out of the motor in one of it's three settings. If I put in less, I get proportionally less from the motor. And none of my settings get anywhere near the full motor power of 250 watts.
Anyroadup, I seem to come back feeling more worked-out and tired after an e-bike ride. But I'm going around our habitual routes faster; or I'm going further; and often both.
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As to "cheating" if riding with friends, well - it's not a race is it? And if it is (as in chain gang) you'd only be cheating yourself, eh, since the "prize" is improved fitness. On the other hand, if the e-motor means you can stick on with the chain gang (just) you'll still be having to work very hard - harder than if you had no e-motor so dropped off the back after the first mile then went home.
So there.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes