Power On!

If you're one of the many riders tackling the 109km Cape Town Cycle Tour on an e-bike... you should do a little homework!

- TIM BRINK

SINCE THE CYCLE TOUR ORGANISERS introduced the e-bike category a few years back, it's grown exponentially - much like the e-bike world itself.

And at the risk of irritating the few stick-in-the-muds left who detest these 'cheating machines', what a wonderful addition to the event the e-bike has been. It's allowed hundreds of riders who might never have had a chance to experience all the magic of the Cycle Tour - the scenery, the spirit - the opportunity to do so. And with little or no impact on the riders of normally-aspirated machines.

So. How do you get your pedal-assist machine around a hilly 109km route, without becoming one of the few (remarkably few, it must be said) pushing 20kg-plus of two-wheeled enemy up Suikerbossie, with both battery and sense of humour depleted? Let's have a look.

RESEARCH

The first thing is to work out with your bike shop whether your bike can actually make the full distance on one battery. But ridden carefully (we’ll get to that), you can usually eke a good deal more out of them than the conservative projections the manufacturers give you – most bikes with a 500Wh battery should get you home. Just.

BEHAVE

Do. Not. Try. This. If. You. Have. Modified. Your. Bike.

Battery life is destroyed by speed; and if you’ve got clever and jimmied your machine so it’s not limited to the boring 25km/h dictated by our market and the rules of the Cape Town Cycle Tour, you’re asking for trouble towards the end of the ride.

The Cycle Tour has helped here, a little, with its ruling that any e-bike times faster than 3h50 will be considered cheating, and will be deleted. It’s for our own good, really.