E-Bikes and Why We Need to Earn Our Miles
A grueling moment from a Savage Race, capturing the physical demand of navigating a deep mud obstacle with barbed wire.
I am fortunate enough to live just a few miles from the shore of Lake Michigan, with access to Wisconsin’s incredible network of interconnected bike trails right in my backyard.
On any given weekend, you can ride from Milwaukee all the way up through Sheboygan and beyond. These beautifully preserved, paved trails link our local communities and offer a gateway to stunning state parks like Harrington Beach, Kohler-Andrae, and Point Beach.
But lately, the view on these paths has shifted.
Over the last several years, I’ve watched traditional bicycles get rapidly replaced by electric bikes and scooters. As someone who is on these trails nearly every day, it has been weighing heavily on my mind. While many celebrate this shift as a win for convenience, it points to a much deeper, more concerning cultural issue that I fight every single day as a coach: our never-ending obsession with shortcuts, and our systematic elimination of anything that is hard.
The Spartan Rule: You Can't Delegate the Pain
Right now, my daily trail miles have a very specific purpose. I am training for a Spartan Trifecta Weekend, a brutal gauntlet of obstacles, unforgiving terrain, and relentless miles. Over the course of two days, you face three distinct races: a 21K, a 10K, and a 5K. It is absolutely not for the faint of endurance or heart.
In a Spartan race, the rules are simple but uncompromising. If you miss an obstacle, you don't get a pass. You hit the penalty loop, or you drop and do 30 burpees before you are allowed to move on.
Crossing that final finish line is an incredible accomplishment, but only because of the tax you paid to get there.
Imagine if I showed up to the starting line and paid someone else to do the obstacles for me. Imagine if I simply ran around the mud, the ropes, and the walls, and then proudly claimed my medal. What did I actually achieve? What am I taking away from the experience?
The Danger of Unearned Speed
Yet, this is exactly what we are doing on our bike paths. We are running around the obstacles.
Watching the e-bike takeover feels less like a technological evolution and more like a motorized retreat from exertion. When you remove the physical struggle from a journey, you don't just save energy, you forfeit the transformation.
No one gets stronger by twisting a throttle. No one builds cardiovascular health, mental toughness, or physical capability by letting a battery pack do the heavy lifting. You should have to train for a 50-mile bike ride the exact same way I am training for this Spartan weekend. The training is the point. The suffering is the forge.
But this isn’t just a philosophical debate about fitness, it has become a massive safety crisis on our local trails.
As someone who walks, runs, and cycles on these paths daily, I am constantly blown away by the speed at which e-bikes fly past pedestrians without a word of warning. Accidents are quietly skyrocketing, and the reason is simple: unearned speed.
On a traditional bicycle, you have to spend months building the physical capability, leg power, and cardiovascular endurance required to maintain 20 miles per hour. During that time of hard work, you naturally develop the bike-handling skills, spatial awareness, and fast reaction times needed to handle that kind of velocity safely.
When you bypass that struggle with an electric motor, you hand high-speed machinery to people who lack the physical and technical skills to control it. You get riders traveling at speeds their nervous systems aren't trained for, with reaction times that are far too slow for the velocity they are traveling. Artificial power creates artificial confidence, and it’s making our trails dangerous for everyone.
When distance, effort, and speed are no longer earned, the reward disappears and danger takes its place. The quiet confidence that comes from tackling a brutal Lake Michigan headwind under your own power is completely lost.
The "Wall-E" Nation and the Loss of Self-Worth
In my coaching practice, I see the psychological fallout of this shortcut culture every day. We are fast becoming the real-world version of the humans in the movie Wall-E, floating through life on motorized chairs, insulated from discomfort, completely dependent on technology to move us forward.
When we systematically engineer struggle out of our lives, whether it's how we recreate, how we commute, or how we exercise—our psychological armor thins.
By avoiding the physical investment of the trail, the already diminished sense of accomplishment and self-worth in our culture drops even further. True self-esteem cannot be bought, automated, or simulated by an electric motor. It is a biological byproduct of overcoming resistance. When you cheat the effort, you cheat your own brain out of the earned pride that builds real confidence.
My Challenge as a Coach
We are engineered to do difficult things. Hard things forge resilience.
As a coach, my job is to help people find the strength to endure the hard things. You cannot build a strong mind, a resilient body, or the critical skills required for life on unearned miles.
Next time you hit the trails, consider leaving the motor behind and keep it on the streets where in my opinion it belongs. Let's choose the harder path, earn our miles, develop true competence, and reclaim the resilience we are so quickly giving away. No shortcuts. No throttles. And definitely no burpees on an e-bike.
