sell them all and get one of these

• TQ motor with 920W
  
• 1'050Wh battery
  
• €16'500 (dropper post is an option...)
  
• 45mph
  

I never had any interest in unpowered cycling, but since acquiring a pedelec last month am really enjoying it.

 

On the other hand I am a lifelong driving enthusiast and can foresee the pedelec supplanting the car to a certain extent. I love route planning and going for drives on pre-planned routes, and have been delighted to discover the wealth of info online on cycling routes.

Depends how you use your ebike. I went for a 35 mile with a community cycle club last weekend. I use power assist just to keep my heart rate under 150. If my HR is less than that I just pedal it with the battery off. I think I used assist for all of 2 minutes total over about 2 and half hours before we got to the cafe near the end and went our separate ways.

 

As the ebike weighs the best part of 30kg laden with panniers etc. I probably got a bertter work out than I would have done on my unpowered MTB.

 

My standard 15km fitness route is also almost totally flat and about 5 minutes faster on the MTB than on my hybrid ebike.

 

But when I do the Tour de Manc charity cycle ride in May, 100km on a hilly route, I will defitely take the ebike!

Depends how you use your ebike. I went for a 35 mile with a community cycle club last weekend. I use power assist just to keep my heart rate under 150. If my HR is less than that I just pedal it with the battery off. I think I used assist for all of 2 minutes total over about 2 and half hours before we got to the cafe near the end and went our separate ways.

 

As the ebike weighs the best part of 30kg laden with panniers etc. I probably got a bertter work out than I would have done on my unpowered MTB.

 

My standard 15km fitness route is also almost totally flat and about 5 minutes faster on the MTB than on my hybrid ebike.

 

But when I do the Tour de Manc charity cycle ride in May, 100km on a hilly route, I will defitely take the ebike!

 

My standard "on the flat" fitness ride is 30 km (up from 27 km last year) and I hope to get back to doing it twice a week. Last year I was averaging 32 km/h at peak fitness so you can see the motor will be mostly extra weight with the cut off set to 25 km/h. I am still feeling yesterdays ride because of the hill in front of me now as I type. If you get it wrong in a car it is a first gear climb otherwise second gear.

Something others have told me and I am finding out for myself is that you need to keep doing it to be able to keep doing it.

 

As an older person ( meaning older than I used to be) I find that fitness can easily and surprisingly quickly be lost through inactivity and regaining it becomes a longer process as age increases.

 

In my case, as my wifes illness progressed I was unable to do much cycling or walking and for her last three months I was a total couch potato.

Moving forward I am trying hard but finding it difficult to regain my lost fitness so I walk most days, have tried running but ended up injured (twice), I ride the bike when weather permits and have ordered some home gym equipent but the road back, if there even is one, to where I was 18 months ago seems a long one.

Yesterday I did a 40 miler which is a start but although enjoyable wasnt easy and my legs are suffering a bit today so my target 100 miles per week and 60 mile single ride is still a long way off.

The phrase use it or lose it comes to mind.

Walking?

At 81 I have difficulty walking 50 yds then near falling over with extreme lower back pain combined with breathlessness, I last cycled some 60 years ago - motorbikes ever since, I now have my Quartz e-bike and look forward to doing more riding - but who with at 81? Still, summer is coming so looking forward to it although still can’t walk any distance as breathing is assisted by 7 coronary stents only some of which seem to work.

 

In younger years I spent 28-1/2 as a London firefighter enjoying most of my time, now I feel almost reduced to scrap which is very annoying.

 

Jim

Edited February 14, 20197 yr by Jimo

In younger years I spent 28-1/2 as a London firefighter enjoying most of my time, now I feel almost reduced to scrap which is very annoying.

 

Yes it is very frustrating Jim , I resent each stage of my own deterioration with age.

 

But try to keep your spirits up and enjoy whatever you are able to do with the e-bike. After all, 81 is just another way of expressing 18.

.

18? I remember it well - especially one morning peddeling to work in heavy rain, head down I was keeping rain out of my eyes when BANG - I collided with a parked lorry’s tailboard, fell to the floor then spent weeks recouperating from cuts and bruises In bed at home.......

 

Jim

Our neighbour is 86 and thought her son buying her an ebike was really silly ... what was wrong with her old 'real' bike.? She went out for a ride on her new bike (with my wife on our recent electric bike), converted after about 2 miles (it took that long because the first mile was downhill).

I was a keen and strong cyclist and only bought an e-bike originally to help with pulling a large heavily loaded trailer.

 

But despite that restricted e-bike use, it undermined my fitness and I found myself increasingly using the e-bike.

 

Only three years later I'd completely abandoned unpowered cycling due to the loss of enough fitness in my hilly area, and I owned three e-bikes.

 

So yes, e-biking destroyed my unpowered cycling. However I was in my late sixties then so that would have been an influence.

.

 

 

I'm just having a spot of luncheon outside a pub in Central London and the amount of ebikes whizzing about is amazing.

 

It used to be the case you'd see one everyday or so but now it's easily 10 to 20 percent. True a lot of them are deliveroo riders but still the amount of ebikes compared to last year has grown massively.

I'm just having a spot of luncheon outside a pub in Central London and the amount of ebikes whizzing about is amazing.

 

It used to be the case you'd see one everyday or so but now it's easily 10 to 20 percent. True a lot of them are deliveroo riders but still the amount of ebikes compared to last year has grown massively.

 

The weird thing is how they are most popular in fairly flat areas, Central London is hardly the Alps of course, and a phenomenon we discussed long ago. They took off early in East Anglia which is famously flat, but in hilly areas like my North Downs they never have, I don't see any.

 

And the country where they are by far the most popular of all in Europe is The Netherlands which is the flattest country of all.

 

Bafflingly counter intuitive.

 

As they say in Yorkshire, There's nowt so queer as folks.

.

East Anglia ‘Famously Flat’? Its most definitely far from flat although not mountainous, probably depends on age of observer and one’s physical condition, flatter areas are to be found in Lincolnshire; today I went to get petrol and LPG and by the time I’d queued and paid I was totally out of breath and hardly able to re-attach myself to the car 30 ft away, a short journey later to visit Tesco and for the first time in my life my good lady wife had to push me around the store in a wheelchair!

Very degrading.....

 

Jim

Edited February 15, 20197 yr by Jimo

Don't forget the wind and the steep ramps over some road and canals in the Netherlands

Well I'm in the Scottish Highlands, living 260m above sea level surrounded by mountains....I may be "only" 50 but I think an E- MTB for me is perfectly reasonable, with a spare battery I should be able to have a fair range in a radius from my house, and the one aspect of conventional mountain biking I hated was pushing the thing.... I need my wee van for sea kayaking but have considered selling both van and kayak as they don't get used that often (finding weekends with suitable(non-windy) weather, daylight, that the missus isn't working(dog duties) to get away is about twice a year).

As for getting a road e-bike I could see me converting one of my bikes which could be used to do a shopping run( nearest shop 8 miles) with panniers -and get rid of the van??

East Anglia ‘Famously Flat’? Its most definitely far from flat although not mountainous,

 

I'm thinking of Suffolk and most of Norfolk which are predominantly quite flat, as is much of Cambridgeshire.

 

I still maintain that East Anglia is overall one of the flatter areas of this country.

.

I'm just having a spot of luncheon outside a pub in Central London and the amount of ebikes whizzing about is amazing.

 

It used to be the case you'd see one everyday or so but now it's easily 10 to 20 percent. True a lot of them are deliveroo riders but still the amount of ebikes compared to last year has grown massively.

A bike shop close to me told me that for the last few months they have been selling more pedelelecs than conventional bikes.

I'd like to do the road biking as a pure workout to increase fitness but use the KTM to go for blasts off road which have the emphasis on fun and enjoyment, not some gruelling workout like mountain biking used to be.

I think its perfectly possible to get to and maintain a decent level of cycling fitness just by using a pedelec, in particular if one uses a pulse monitor as Andy has mentioned in this thread. By making use of the monitor one can ensure that most of ones ridding is being done at a level that provides a good workout but does not become too punishing.

 

If one is looking for very high levels of cycling fitness then one is almost certainly going to have to use a conventional bike.

I have gone the other way. Did just over 10,000 miles on a 26v Panasonic powered Kalkhoff Aggatu, now 5000 miles on a Cube Hardtail with a Bosch CX motor which i still have. However over the last 2 years i bought a Genesis Tour De Fer and Planet X Pro Carbon road bikes, and have been doing much more on the conventional bikes, including a recent trip from Biarritz to the UK on the Tour De Fer. Without E Bikes this never would have happened, i built good base fitness from the E Bikes, so that i can really enjoy the conventional bikes.

I think you can build a superb level of cycle fitness with an E Bike, using my Bosch in Eco setting which is most of the time, is about the same as using a conventional lightweight bike like my Pro Carbon = 8kg. With the old Panasonic system the cadence you had to use was far too low, for comfort, used to hurt my knees, but no such problem with the Bosch, i use a cadence of about 80 to 85, in Eco good hard workout.