Another amazing thing about bikes is that reducing effort drastically doesn’t slow you down much because of the exponential relationship between speed and energy. Drag increases with the square of the speed, meaning higher speeds demand exponentially more effort. At full effort, the person is riding faster, but the energy consumption is disproportionately higher due to drag.
You can chill while getting from A to B, and quickly.
It is one of our greatest achievements in systems design.