Airsporter1st wrote: ↑18 Jun 2022, 12:38pm
Nearholmer wrote: ↑16 Jun 2022, 12:59pm
Assuming that the 14% is devoted to the challenging bits of the route, you will be getting more low to medium intensity exercise, and less high intensity exercise. I’m no sports physiologist, but I understand both to be of value in different ways, so you are losing something, while gaining something else.
Very true, I’m sure - although the ebikemotion system doesn’t eliminate the high intensity effort, just ameliorates it (Orbea’s slogan is “Just Enough Assistance”). I still have to work hard on the hills and arrive at the top breathing hard. The only real difference is that I don’t have to get out of the saddle or, worse get off and push!
It's an easy assumption that an e-bike just makes it all easier. In practice it can do so of course - but it can make it just as hard or even harder!
Although I resisted an e-bike for some years after the ladywife got hers, a couple of borrows of her electrified steed intrigued me, as I came back from riding it more knackered than when I went out on my unpowered bike. I did try to minimise the use of the motor; and her e-bike is 7kg heavier than my racy bike, but ..... .
Thinking on those experiences, as well as about those of the rides I've done since getting my own e-bike about a month ago, I realised that I hadn't stopped outputting my own max sustainable power up the Welsh hills, whether I had the motor switched on or not. In some ways, being able to go faster up hills than when on a non e-bike encourages you to try even harder yourself. You know that the whole climb will take a lot less time than heretofore so you can afford to give it "fool gas" as there's less risk of blowing up before the top. In fact, no risk really as you can still progress well up the last hundred yards or so, if your legs & lungs insist "no more", as that e-motor is still working.
Adjusting the Fazua motor profiles for its three modes is a good way to tailor the e-assistance to the sort of riding you want to do. There are many possible settings that can reduce the assistance to the minimum, demand a lot from your legs before you get lots from the motor or .... allow you to input only 75 watts when you've got close to the bonk with the motor adding 150 or 200 watts to get you the last three miles home.
One way of accelerating an increase in fitness is to do plenty of max-heartrate intervals. Another is to cycle far enough to get close to bonking. Normally you have to limit that sort of riding carefully as you don't want to be knackered & bonked 15 miles from home. You might be tempted to call for the taxi-of-shame! So instead, you can use an e-motor and only feel motor-shame, which no one but you and the motor need be aware of.
Cugel, playing like a big kid with a new toy.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes