Are I Exercising?
Opa Fiets Says Whether E-Bikes are “Cheating” Is Up to You
I’ve been riding e-bikes for two years now, after spending 45 years on a road bike.
I have learned a lot in that time. This is my second e-bike. I traded my white Edison over Christmas for a new, gray, slightly improved model. Both are “Class 2” e-bikes. That means they have a throttle. But it’s a baby throttle. It gets me going from a corner but dies out within five seconds. The motor stops working at 20 mph. The range is about 40 miles.
What everyone who remains on a manual bike or who is new to e-biking wants to know is whether I’m “cheating” by riding an e-bike.
The answer is, yeah sometimes. When I’m on my way home from somewhere, I will turn up the motor and put nothing into my pedaling. I’ve had some “workouts” where my heart rate stayed well within its normal range. (Hard to do when you’re 70.)
When it’s hot out, I can take my first mile without even touching the motor, because our house stands near a minor continental divide. I pay for that on the way back. But it’s that trip home that is the best ad for the e-bike, because I’m confident that I’ll return in comfort.
A Little History
When I first got an e-bike, I spent afternoons doing all the rides I was no longer capable of on my regular bike. That means I rode to Atlanta’s Airport, I rode around Stone Mountain, and I did a 35-mile loop from Decatur through Buckhead, Tucker, and Clarkston, toward east DeKalb County.
Once I settled down, I began doing chores on my e-bike. I went to grocery stores, I went to doctor appointments, I went to the pharmacy and out for lunch. This is where I found the true power of e-biking, which is the ability to stop, to walk into a store with a cart and not get strange looks from people. I stopped talking about it.
Each time I ride I have a choice between exercising and just riding. Everyone has that choice, and drivers are jealous because many make the choice not to exercise.
An e-moto, riding 28 mph and faster just on the throttle, makes many people angry at all e-bikes. They can’t tell the difference between that and me struggling uphill at 8.
You can’t tell the difference in any case. An e-bike rider can get a workout at 10 mph with the motor at a very low level, and I’ve done that. They can zip along at 30 barely exercising at all, and I’ve done that. The exercise in that case is the mental agility to watch out for potholes and to keep an eye on traffic, to stay focused on what’s around and what’s ahead.
This is the true “zen” of e-biking, that state when nothing else exists except the world immediately around you. It’s when I’m briefly a child again.
How Do You Ride?
This winter brought something else. I’ve begun looking for hills.
Winter riding is a workout even when I feel like I’m relaxing, just from the cold. With winter gloves and multiple jackets, the wind still cuts through my chest at the start of each ride, so I’m looking for comfort when I turn down the motor and fight my way up that hill.
My point is that an e-bike can be many things. It can be a bike, a glorious path to exercise. It can be a car, a way to get from here to there. No one, watching you ride, can automatically tell what you are.
Only you know.
How do you ride?
