It's my first eBike and comes to me as a result of my health issues, namley permanent vestibular damage and cervical spinal misalignments which (long story short) cause me severe migraines when my body stresses and tires from excess physical exertion especially the muscles along my spine and under my scapulas.
I have been considering a pedal assist bike for over a year before I took the plunge. My intention was to have a pedal assist bike to extend my 90 minute limit in the saddle to half and eventually full day rides, albeit at very gentle pace.
I've owned the Orbea Gain for just 3 weeks and ridden it just over only 150km in just 4 rides, however, the early results are so far, so good.
The Orbea Gain concept is a road bike based model that offers modest pedal assist up to 25km/hr in a package that looks essentially like a contemporary road bike with a full Shimano 105 groupset, a 40 Nm Mahle X35+ compact rear hub based assist motor and a small 250Ah Mahle battery hidden in the lower end of the downtube. The motor offers three levels of assist which can be custom tuned via the Mahle phone app.
The bike weighs approx 12.8kg (size m carbon monocoque frame) with it's heavy duty Fulcrum e-Racing 400 wheelset and fitted with pedals, cages saddlebag and tools etc and I am able to easily ride it without pedal assist over tarmac up to moderate gradient rises and on gravel roads up to light gradients.
The Mahle x35+ motor is a 250 watt motor offering just 40Nm of torque - a fraction of what contemporary mid mount motor drives offer. However because the Gain is considerably lighter weight than mid mount motor models the idea is to offer just enough pedal assist to take the edge off the ride effort and so far I've found this to be largely spot on.
I rode up a 250m long 23% gradient last weekend using the highest level of pedal boost and found the assist level still perceptible but insufficient to make the climb a cake walk with me having to pedal at perhaps 85% of my ability with huffing and puffing but not nearly as much as riding my previous unassisted road bikes up the same hill. However, I did notice that once the gradient flattened out to 15% after the deadly 250m long section that the pedal assist took half the effort out of the climbing.
This is where the Orbea Gain shines. Pedaling along flats or steady gradients up to 12-14% it's considerably easier to maintain progress even with 40mm wide tyres at low pressure. Because I've been riding on very familiar loop rides near home that I've covered on conventional bikes countless dozens of times, I've observed that riding the Gain using lowest level of assist I can avoid dropping to the small ring up front in several locations, instead maintaining my cadence and remaining on the big ring on a respectable sprocket out back. This is precisely what I wanted to have at my disposal - modest power assist esp. on the run home so I don't tire and create too much tension in my upper spinal cord.
Thus far I've generally ridden the Gain on loop rides only - no long distance one way or return trips as yet but that is my goal, 100km+ long rides in a day over the Otway Ranges and beyond. My modus operandi thus far has been to ride to approx half distance without the motor assist and ridden back home using the first two levels of motor assist. I've twice managed to break past my previous 90 minute ride time limit with the last ride a 44km long mixed gravel/tarmac ride that saw me spend 135 mins actual riding time. I've not had a migraine since I've owned the Gain and so far my progression to longer rides has been a success.
In coming weeks I intend to retro fit the gain with some flared gravel bars as I find riding in the drops with a slight flare a near perfect alignment of my scapulas - riding with my elbows jutting out a bit really suits my body and I'm also swapping out the the 100mm stem for a 90mm to get the reach right where I like it. I'll update this post occasionally as I have more impressions and achievements to report.
