Having ridden my mountain bike once in the last 4 years, I was persuaded to go to a bike testival at Regensburg by a friend. This was a fairly harsh re-introduction to mountain biking as it was all technical trail riding, with the brakes the wrong way around! We did three bike tests from the test centre, two of which were with lightweight e-bikes and the third with normal bikes. The lightweight e-bikes were barely heaver than my normal mountain bike! I now certainly understand e-bikes for this type of riding, as my heart rate average was very similar for all three outings, just with the e-bikes we covered an awful lot more ground and there was much less anaerobic use of the legs, which meant less time recovering at the top before the descents. Unfortunately lightweight e-bikes are somewhat out of my price range at the moment, but the day out certainly made me want to repair my mountain bike so that I can actually use it.