Originally Posted by
VegasTriker
It takes time and effort to build up endurance on your recumbent trike. If you had purchased a trike without e-assist you would have encountered this as a new rider. I remember starting out back in 2003 with a brand new 36 pound trike with 19 to 98 gear inch range. I wasn't fast (still not!) and the steeper hills were a real challenge. It got easier quite quickly but I was riding approximately 3k miles per year back then. Unfortunately for some e-assist can act as a crutch so it becomes harder to achieve your maximum endurance. Your post made me go to the Sheldon Brown calculator and enter in the information for my mid-range chainring (39T) and the values for the Catrike cassette 11-13-15-17-19-22-25-28-32-36. Drive wheel size is 700C X 23 and cranks are 170mm. What I got out in gear inches are 29.2 - 32.9 - 37.6 - 42.1 - 47.9 - 55.4 - 61.9 - 70.2 - 81 - 95.7. These are the gears I use 95% of the time. Occasionally I use the 52 tooth chainring going downhill and extremely rarely use the 30T chainring. It has to be a hill I would rather not climb to go there.
That makes me realize I am mostly starting out on a level stretch in 61.9 GI and progressing up to 81 GI or 95.7 for most of the time. If I hit a hill I might go a bit lower starting out and drop down a gear or two. I wouldn't get far in my 42.1 GI gear before exhausted with spinning too fast for my preference. I'm not a masher (use too low a gear) because it hurts my knees to do so. I just pick a gear that seems comfortable and don't worry much about which gear it is in.
You actually help make my point about e-assist. Because the trikes usually come with standard gearing not adjusted for e-assist, they present little resistance and even if you are a spinner with a high cadence, you can't keep up. So the exercise and strength building of the typical e-assist trike is pretty limited. As I did with my DF bike with e-assist, it requires modification if you actually do want to get exercise. The way I had my DF set up was that I actually had to put in the exact same effort as I would without a motor but the result propelled me several miles faster is all. My cadence and resistance remained identical to a non-motorized bike (I had a cadence meter) and I just went a little faster. That worked great on the DF because my motor/e-assist only weighed 4.5lbs incl. battery and that made it easy to also ride without the system turned on. On a trike, the e-assist system typically adds a good 15 lbs total. I can ride with the motor off on total flats (and in fact do which is why my range is so good) but the assist is needed for any. kind of hill. I limited the voltage on my system, chose the lowly 36v battery, specifically because too much power means less exercise. I also went into the display settings and turned the assist power to "least". So with my 52/11 I can maintain a cadence of 65 (still getting bent legs) with decent resistance in level 1. Unless it is a big hill I never leave level 1. Well, wait, that's not true......one day I was running late getting to my appointment at kaiser and I did pop into level 2 to avoid being late, lol. But that was a case of using my trike 100% as my car. It is entirely possible to set up a trike so that the exercise efforts and rewards are as good as without a motor, but one has the added benefit of getting places a bit faster and there's a fallback option in case of surprising hills or stressed joints or other injury. It's unfortunate that they come with standard gearing and they just plop an assist system on them instead of putting the right gearing on in the first place. It sets people up to use it as a "crutch" as you said because they often don't realize the changes they need to make.