I reviewed an electric bike once in the 90s, before anyone discovered intuitive software. Working out how to turn it on and off was way beyond anything I’d picked up from a basic humanities education and it was like a high-intensity, unwanted brain workout accompanied by a real fear of death. Everything has changed. The Raleigh Mustang Comp controls are very obvious, the weight is greater than a regular racer yet it’s hardly a moped, but most of all, it’s no longer an energy boost for the tired commuter; it’s a training aid. You pedal for as long as you’re able, and kick the motor in only when you have to. It doesn’t go madly fast — about 22km/h unless you’re determined – but it feels like flying.
As the week goes on, the threshold for “but I have to” gets lower and lower until I’m scarcely prepared to use my own legs. But on the other hand, I was cycling everywhere. “I must be getting fitter,” I’d think, sashaying up to Crystal Palace in south London just for the hell of checking out its one-way system, “because I’m so incredibly cold”. I became so attached to it as a mode of transport that I actually Googled the fitness benefits of not being warm enough, but there are none.
There’s a beautiful ride favoured by Dulwich Paragon cycling club, out of London and into the South Downs, where you discover way too brutally what a hill really means and why there’s so much elemental human triumph involved in getting up one. I did the ride on my own: the psychology of having an engine when no one else has one is like having stockpiled rice before an apocalypse. It’s true that you have some rice, but you don’t feel good about it. I imagine. It was a constant mental gear change, honest self power for the easy bits, freewheeling spectator sport for the hard: like alternating between a bike ride and being on an open-topped tourist bus. It didn’t count, in other words. Probably 65% of the point of cycling for pleasure is the exhaustion at the end of it, another 30% is other cyclists, “fresh air” the rest.
However, I had the time and the untenanted mental space to think of about a thousand scenarios in which this bike would make you fitter: lugging it around would give you tremendous upper-body strength; if you had a daily commute that was manageable in the morning but too tiring at the end of the day; if you had an easily discouraged personality and needed the promise of five minutes of fun to get you on to the bike; if you enjoyed the sensation of dishonestly overtaking better, fitter people. Look upon it at as a souped-up bike, and you’ll find it madly expensive (£2,800) and a bit of a cop-out. Try looking upon it as a virtuous motorbike or a tiny, well-ventilated car.
What I learned
The life of the modern battery is eerily good. Did 70 miles on a four-hour charge and didn’t get through half of it.
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