OT: buying an electric bike for the missus

[RobertL]

bikes. I see quite a number of them in Cambridge being ridden by people who look young fit and healthy.

That's a good point. thanks.

Robert (60 next year)

[Geoff Pearson]

I know 5 people who ride electric bikes - all of them perfectly healthy - they just like toys. So much so that two of them (the Vicar and his wife) ride on the pavement instead of the road. God moves...

[Tim+]

weight.

It's not entirely a diversionary activity as you still get some exercise. I run and cycle and feel no need for an electric bike BUT I don't think it's always helpful or realistic to expect everyone to do the same.

Would you tell a smoker to forget about exercising if he can't stop smoking? The benefits of exercise even whilst carrying on smoking are well proven. In the same way, depending on electric assistance will indeed remove *some* of the benefit of cycling but not all of it and if it makes the transition easier (and if the OP has the money), I say go for it.

Continually banging on with the same old lose weight, do more exercise MY way argument is also tediously trollsome. Better to be overweight but fitter than just overweight.

Tim

[Geoff Pearson]

Tim

go back to the beginning - see why he started all this in the first place - because he and his wife couldn't cycle because they were too fat. You don't fix that by changing bike.

G

[Tim+]

You seem very certain about that. Wish I knew all the answers. I say let 'em try it and they may come to love exercising outdoors and in time, maybe find that they can progress to unassisted bikes. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Tim

[Gazz]

Oy, f*ck off,

the missus is too unfit to cycle and walk very far, she's about 5 foot 6 and weighs almost the same as me, i'm 6 foot 3, and have just been on the scales, i am 112.3 Kg.

I have malformed sacroiliac joints from birth, arthritis type symptoms affecting my knees, hips, shoulders, neck, wrists and finger joints, ankylosing spondylitis which affects the back (fuses together from scar tissue, every now and then the scar tissue breaks open, causing more to form) If it matters i also have ulcerative colitis, and am anemic due to not being able to absorb B12 vitamins thanks to the gut problems.

My weight actually fluctuates a fair bit, depends on the state of my colitis, when it's playing up bad it's known as the 'shit your self thin' diet, but i have never been over 117 Kg.

The missus suffered from depression big time before she met me, living on crisps and microwave snack type food, she did get her self a dog, but found her too much to handle, so re-homed her and got a couple of cats instead... they dont need walking so were ideal for her.

She's tried half heartedly to walk more, cycle and so on, but she just ends up in pain and gives up, hence thinking a lecky bike would allow her to gently get into shape,

but according to you, it seems she should not bother cycling, lay in bed all day and just eat less, and the weight will magically drop off her, and she will be fit and able to ride 20 miles without breaking into a sweat if she wanted to??

[fred]

Run that by me again. You cycle from Edinburgh to Glasgow along the canal and cycle along the sea front and are thrilled that its flat. Of course its flat. Canal barges couldn't climb hills bar through locks and the sea is flat.

I've been in Edinburgh and it isn't flat by a long chalk and I doubt that Scotland consists of only Edinburgh and Glasgow anyway

[S Viemeister]

cycle along the sea front and are thrilled that its flat. Of course its flat. Canal barges couldn't climb hills bar through locks and the sea is flat.

Scotland consists of only Edinburgh and Glasgow anyway

I used to live in Edinburgh - my legs got quite a workout, going up and down the (seven?) hills.

[charles]

but he did say "where most people live". But, I'd agree that Edinburgh isn't flat - memories of cycling to and from school 60 years ago.

[Clive George]

That's surely nonsense? Mild exercise may not burn enough energy over doing nothing to make any noticable difference, but if you do enough while keeping food intake the same, weight has to either go down or at least stop rising as fast as it was.

(of course "enough" might be too much for many people...)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Afaics, the recumbent plan is just flan in the sky for the moment. The original query was about more convnentional bikes being electrified or one off the shelf, which is a good thing, either way. Better to get some assisted cycling than none at all, don't you think?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

And you're an authority on this, how, exactly? Ever been a fat bastard and taken up cycling? No? Thought not.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Such an attitude is fairly typical of the cycling purists, who simply can't see others' points of view. I'm mildly surprised there hasn't been an outbleak (typo left in) of cycling purism already.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Well, I can say from direct experience that I didn't get back on the bike until I'd lost a bit - not wanting to bring on a coronary. However, some gentle cycling, even when I was still above 130kg, made a big difference to the rate of weight loss and that was just pootling around locally, on the flat. The slightly fitter you get, the more it seems to get you and the building of useful muscle means you feel the strain less every time you go out on the bike. When my knees became too painful, I'd already stepped up my fitness, so getting out on the electric bike was less painful anyway and even allowing for a layoff period when I would have expected to have lost most of that bike fitness, the motor made up for that. In the past two years the motor has allowed me to retain cycling mobility, otherwise the bike would have been lying in the shed, going rusty.

[Gazz]

yup, the recumbent plan was my usual getting side tracked issue, brought up after someone mentioned the uk law with regards to lecky bikes, and i was curious to how an alternative to the long chain from crank to rear wheel (crank driven genny, hub motor, wires linking the 2) would fare in the eyes of the law... i can guess the answer tho.

Anyhoo, the missus's birthday is in 5 days time, so i need to find a decent bike shop in the nottingham area (the raleigh factory is about half a mile from me, but i doubt they have a factory shop) Going to look at getting a standard dutch style bike first, and add a hub motor front wheel, battery pack and electronics pack a little later,

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Tip; if you have alloy front forks, I wouldn't risk a front motor. Also, there are some interesting bottom-bracket conversion kits starting to appear from China, so it would be worth bearing that in mind.

[fred]

Hmmmmm. I carry a 'bit' of weight myself and always find cycling, or swimming, safe ways to get exercise. Apart from a sore ass for the first week no strain is placed on the body in anything like that suffered withjogging/running even walking

[Geoff Pearson]

Actually, I lost 12 kg last year by giving up flour - bread, cakes, pizza and so on. But I didn't do that to lose weight - the intestinal effects of gluten were too much to take - it is something that comes on with age. My weight went up when I started running, cycling and swimming at the age of 40 so I have a BMI of 25 - which, of course, I claim is the disproportionate weight of muscle: seen Chris Hoy's thighs?

So I weigh 82kg - and feel a great deal better than when I was 92kg and am aiming (pointlessly because it can't be done) at 75kg. I cycled to work 50 miles a week - slowly so it had little exercise value and was just a convenient way to travel (there being no buses). Old ladies in the Netherlands don't cycle for fitness - they just travel and may not be fit.

The point I have been trying to make is that Gazz's goal seems to be fitness and clearly a multi-point approach is required: lose weight and do something to improve cardio-vascular performance. For the latter swimming would be better for fat people - no effect on knees but gets most joints moving. Spending £1000 on two bikes will not do much for either. And if there is that number of health issues, many GPs, at least in Scotland, can issue green gym passes for local swimming pools.

[Geoff Pearson]

You are probably right - except that people who say they are going to exercise never do. If they wanted to, they could have done some the morning they say that - like smokers : "I'm stopping next week" Yeh, right, as modern people say.

[Geoff Pearson]

70% of the population here lives in the basically flat central belt. The main towns and cities are on the coast or river sides: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth, Stirling. I can cycle east-west across Edinburgh without hitting much of a hill. I used to live in the Highlands which are not flat but cycling is easy because the roads wend along valley floors - there is not that much steep hill stuff.