YAMAHA WABASH RT

When you live a life of wheelies, burnouts and fast laps on race tracks, it's hard to spot a midlife crisis... but six months on in the saddle of Yamaha's Wabash e-bike, I daresay that's exactly where I'm at. I'll be honest, cycling isn't for everyone, and quite frankly, Lycra is even more polarising, but for me, life on two wheels, be it powered or pedalled, has formed my staple diet for as long as I can remember.

- 

TESTED BY: Bruce
TIME: Six months
PRICE: £3100
WEB: www.yamaha-motor.eu

I am that bloke who clocks thousands of miles a year on a pushbike, and by the time you've read this, I'll have completed my first ironman triathlon - a 112-mile ride, following a 2.4-mile swim, wrapping things up with a 26.2-mile marathon. It's fair to say I'm the fittest I've ever been, and that's largely down to the Wabash.

I first saw one on the Yamaha stand at last year's Motorcycle Live show and was drawn to it for the simple fact that it blurred the lines between a road bike and a mountain bike-being best described as a gravel bike. Albeit a gravel bike with a hefty electric motor at its heart, cranking out 70Nm of torque, which is nearly as much as some middleweight twins. Crazy, eh! But that's what the spec sheet claimed, and having taken delivery of one just before Christmas, I soon learned it wasn't fibbing. I also learned how heavy this bike is. Hitting the scales at 21.4kg, it's roughly two and half times as heavy as my carbon fibre road bike, but it's also twice as versatile. The truth is that come the time of the Wabash's arrival, I'd tucked away my summer steed with a cup of cocoa and a blanket to keep it warm until the roads resembled something a little less Somme-like.