Elliptigo - Personal Perspective

This Elliptigo is an interesting beast.
It looks like a bike, and most of the gear could belong to a normal bike.
you ride it like a bike ... without the seat.
It is heavy. it is long, even with those tiny wheels.
And it is very expensive.

The beast. And yes, it is green power.

Exercising is very close from any Elliptical trainer in any gym room.

The big - huge - difference, is that you are riding outside, and it feels like a cool bike ride, for pleasure.

But the training itself is hard. Midway between running and biking, I found myself capable of doing 3 hours,

(which is more than I am capable to bike, mostly because it hurts my butt), burning 1600 calories (more than twice than biking, but less than running), and overall feeling tired after the effort, but not as exhausted than running. Feel like a more complete work-out, and obviously, less hard on the overall body.

No percussion, no back pain, etc...

Riding uphill seemed challenging and I am not sure I would be able to ride Maui's volcano, even with the 11th gear version. Going up seemed to require a lot of energy. But this is true for biking as well.

I do no like biking. Then I can see the huge advantage of this thing for cross-training, or when injured, if you cannot run. If that was not that expensive, I would certainly give it a shot at home.

I like the idea of covering twice the distance as in running, seeing more stuff (but you have to stay on the road) and to cover a workout less damaging and more complete.

Most of the rider would say that this is the closest thing you could from running without actually running. I would agree. However, there is a big step. I am not sure why, maybe it is related to actual threshold of effort you have to provide that is lower,

but I did not get the same "high" or spirit or transcendence than in running. Running give me this intangible benefit or feeling that push me to run more and to come back to it.

I did not get that on the elliptigo. (As I do not get it on my bike as well). Don't get me wrong, this is fun and useful. 

But it did not bring me what I am running for - what ever that is !

Maybe we are born to run. But not to bike, or not to ellipti-go.