34
What's the biking equivalent of 10,000 steps a day?
(www.cyclingweekly.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
34 points (100.0% liked)
micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
2395 readers
97 users here now
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
Feel free to also check out
It's a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Being someone who suffers from unspecified chronic pain, I can say that it hurts more to walk 4000 steps than to bike 200 km. It's pretty wild!
Fun fact, the concept of 10,000 steps may have originated in Japan in 1965 where a pedometer called the "Manpo-kei" was sold. Translated to English, "Manpo-kei" means "10,000 step meter".
It was a literal marketing phrase!
But I don't like how the article is like "switch to cycling instead of walking because you'll burn more calories".
Physical fitness can be roughly broken into three groups:
If all you do is walking, you aren't covering all three groups. And if you don't vary your cycling, you'll also not cover all three groups.
If you're serious about health, you have to do low intensity (aerobic), high intensity (cardio) and burst of anaerobic activities.
I've got some issues with my knees, I'm right there with you on walking vs cycling. I had to do a cardio stress test a few years back, and they only had a treadmill. My knees hurt for a month, and I told them in no uncertain terms that I was never doing that again and I'd find a cardiologist who offers a bike for that (and some do.)
I also agree very much on the variability of types of exercise. I bike in two very different ways - MTBing, which has your 2&3, and I have a cargo bike that I use instead of my car most of the time, and that tends to be zone 2 type steady state. I thoroughly enjoy all of it.
One thing that's fair to point out though, is that decent bikes are expensive. I'm really glad to see the rise of decent DTC companies that are making bikes (primarily e-bikes) more affordable - Lectric, Aventon, Himiway, etc. that new Lectric cargo bike for $1500 is a great deal, but it's still $1500. And of course that's in comparison to older companies like Specialized or Santa Cruz, where you're looking at significantly more.
If you are able to replace a significant amount of driving with biking/ebiking but walking isn't viable, then $1500 is still pretty cheap.
In comparison to owning a car, it's dirt cheap for sure, but unless you can entirely eliminate your need to own a car, it's still an additional cost, and most of the US isn't very good about biking infrastructure. I live in the Phoenix area and we have good bike lanes, but as the saying goes, "paint isn't infrastructure" - the vast majority of my urban riding is along 45mph roads, and paint isn't very good at stopping a distracted driver from wandering into my lane.
I kinda got sidetracked there but my point is, that 1500 is an additional cost to owning a car for a lot of the country. (Again, US focused.)
Most of car's costs are milage related. Wear and tear mostly happen from using it. Some insurance costs scale based on milage. Oil changes, tire changes, gas, other repairs, etc mostly scale with milage. So even if you can't replace the car, if you offset 3000 miles over the lifetime of the bike, it mostly pays for itself (although after 3000 miles on a weighty ebike, you might also need $400 in repairs/maintenance and maybe like $50 in charging costs?
But offsetting is a big if. Im certainly lucky where I live (granted I have based where I live partly off having bikeable infrastructure)
Yeah, that's fair. I've put 2500 miles on my cargo bike since I got it just over a year ago. Bike was $1700, plus various accessories, probably $2500 in total.
Replaced the tires for $100, a few tubes, maybe $20, and the freewheel for $20. I do my own maintenance so no labor.
I doubt charging was that much, it's pretty damn cheap to charge it.
I think $50 may be accurate if you ride uphill both ways and charge it in hawaii. Definitely nowhere near that for normal use.