As some of you will know i have an electric bike as i hurt my knee in an accident and have been trying unsuccessfully to ween myself off the electric bike back to my normal bike. This is much easier to say speaking but difficult to write but here goes.
I have completely changed the way i use my electric bike and things are improving much faster than before in terms of weight loss and general work load is more bike like. Previously i had wrote of level 1 and for the better part level 2 and mainly used 3 and occasionally 4. The reason i wrote of level 2 as it was hopeless absolutely no assistance worth talking about. One week i decided to wear my polar heart rate monitor and look at my journey. I have done this chart with my ordinary bike and its not pretty site i am working way too hard, well out of the fat burning zone and into the carb burning region. I done the run again with my usual mixture of 2-3-4 but mainly on 3 as there is a noticeable assist in 3. The graph was completely the opposite i was just in the fat burning zone but for most part of the journey i was out of any zones, no wonder i was not losing weight. So out of curiosity i tried the useless settings 1-2 with occasional use of 3. How wrong was i, the graph was more like a scaled down version of the un-powered bike with a healthy dose of time in each region. So i then tried it in level 2 all the way and again what a difference, it actually does assist but is subtle. My point in this is i was comparing the assist 2 versus 3-4 and it is useless but the figures show that it does actually assist very well. What i am getting at is, its so easy to forget just how much little assistance helps when you have more power available. I had got so used to lever 3-4 that i ignored 1-2 and somehow thought i was still working hard.
I guess the fact that i was not losing weight fast enough should have been a hint but you really can fool yourself that you are working hard when in reality you have actually forgot how hard a non-powered bike was over the same route.
I can no longer let the bike do the work so level 1-2 from now on, as i have signed up for two sportives (100 miles) and the coast to coast route.
But i am still amazed at how i was convinced 1-2 was useless and how wrong i was.
I have completely changed the way i use my electric bike and things are improving much faster than before in terms of weight loss and general work load is more bike like. Previously i had wrote of level 1 and for the better part level 2 and mainly used 3 and occasionally 4. The reason i wrote of level 2 as it was hopeless absolutely no assistance worth talking about. One week i decided to wear my polar heart rate monitor and look at my journey. I have done this chart with my ordinary bike and its not pretty site i am working way too hard, well out of the fat burning zone and into the carb burning region. I done the run again with my usual mixture of 2-3-4 but mainly on 3 as there is a noticeable assist in 3. The graph was completely the opposite i was just in the fat burning zone but for most part of the journey i was out of any zones, no wonder i was not losing weight. So out of curiosity i tried the useless settings 1-2 with occasional use of 3. How wrong was i, the graph was more like a scaled down version of the un-powered bike with a healthy dose of time in each region. So i then tried it in level 2 all the way and again what a difference, it actually does assist but is subtle. My point in this is i was comparing the assist 2 versus 3-4 and it is useless but the figures show that it does actually assist very well. What i am getting at is, its so easy to forget just how much little assistance helps when you have more power available. I had got so used to lever 3-4 that i ignored 1-2 and somehow thought i was still working hard.
I guess the fact that i was not losing weight fast enough should have been a hint but you really can fool yourself that you are working hard when in reality you have actually forgot how hard a non-powered bike was over the same route.
I can no longer let the bike do the work so level 1-2 from now on, as i have signed up for two sportives (100 miles) and the coast to coast route.
But i am still amazed at how i was convinced 1-2 was useless and how wrong i was.
