100 hours on an e-bike

My new “wheelchair” is best thing that has happened to me in years

2024 was my first year with an e-bike, and it was great success, one of the most satisfying and useful things I’ve ever purchased. I‘ve now put 1400 kilometres on the odometer so far. At 14 km/hour, that’s 100 hours with my butt on that seat — and an order of magnitude more than I was riding before I added an e to my bike.

E-biking is not a cure for whatever the 🤬 ails me, but it’s the next best thing: a powerful tool for coping with the pain and malaise. This was always one of the major items on the Project Try Everything checklist — and the investment has really paid off! Maybe even more substantively than I expected.

I promised three bits of good news after reviving the newsletter in April. I’ve now covered those bases and breathed some life back into the project and the newsletter. After this, I’ll get back to posts with some substance that might be more useful/informative.

E-bikes are a lot of fun

I love the feel of the “pedal assist” technology, where the motor adds power to your pedalling … but just goes away if you stop pedalling. So you always have to do some pedalling, and so I get to feel like I’m still a cyclist, because I am still a cyclist. But it’s easier cycling, like always having a tailwind.

That makes a particularly huge difference on a hot day, when you get a little more cooling breeze with a little less effort — magic! Imagine cooling off as you ride up a hill! It’s been more than a year and 1400 kilometres of riding, and I still get a little “what sorcery is this?!” thrill from that.

“Fun” matters. I got the e-bike not long after retiring from ultimate. I needed some fun back. Nothing will ever be as fun for me as confounding the defence to make a perfect end zone reception … but the e-bike is pretty good.

Me and my e-bike on an expedition in Pacific Spirit Park. The bike is a Trek FX+ 2 — a terrific mid-range e-bike, highly recommended.

My world got bigger

After a decade of escalating disability and setbacks, the e-bike expanded my world again. It not only made normal cycling goals much easier, but harder cycling goals possible again — and so I got to have all kinds of experiences that had been out of reach for many years.

I also ran a lot more errands. 😜

So it helped me live a fuller life in spite of my health problems, which is why I started calling it my “wheelchair.”

But maybe it also actually did help me fix something?

Fine control over workout intensity

The e-bike made it possible to keep my exercise ball rolling on the many days when I just wasn’t up for anything else. Without it, I doubt that I could have achieved my recent victory of reclaiming 4k runs, and now even 5k runs (see below) — which is arguably the only victory I’ve had in the last decade of illness.

Again and again, the e-bike allowed me to get the dosage of my exercise medicine just right.

But it’s not just about the control: it was also the way it was also fun and useful. There are many ways to do a light workout … but are they also actually nice? Do you also get to check an errand off your to-do list? The accessibility of exercise options is critical over the long term. For instance, the pool is also a good place for easy exercise (and maybe fun too) … but it’s way harder to fit a trip to the pool into a busy day.

On those hard days between stronger workouts, when the thought of even a short walk made me cringe, I could still get on the bike and burn fifty calories, have a nice time doing it, and also get to the grocery store. And I did.

And I think that’s a major reason why I also have this good news…

RUNNING UPDATE: 5k on the regular, baby!

My first major milestone was regular 4k runs, as I reported last month.

Since then, I’ve managed to build up to 5k — just barely!

It feels like an intense strain, like I’m teetering at the pinnacle of what this body will allow. I’m living with lots of extra discomfort, more or less constantly for a month now, just for the sake of my faith in abstract goal of fitness — a goal I take seriously, but with benefits that I cannot feel.

What I can feel is the pain. It’s like every day is the day after an intense workout. For a month. So I don’t know if I’ll try to keep this up or not.

But I am so far. And the pain has eased some. The real test will be the next month.