Electric assist cycling seems fine to me; you're still cycling.
Except you are doing it with
power assist.
eBikes make cycling, particularly on the hills silly easy. So very definitely cheating in context of a human powered challenge.
Certainly more so than using a train or car to go some of the way and then ride/walk/swim, which seems to be standard practice.
Not at all, the challenge is getting the tiles under human power. In places where there are vicious hills, a rarely any flat spots and lots of offroad, riding somewhere to then tile isn't really an option. It's not as if getting the tiles is any easier. It's very slow going regardless. Currently I'd have to ride somewhere, stay overnight, tile, stay overnight again and then ride home. Expensive in both time and money. Plus many of my off road tiling rides are only 25-50km and usually way harder than 150km rides I've done on roads. They can be like cross country trials riding on occasions. I have spent two+ hours in first gear on a tiling ride before now now. A fantastic ride, I should add, but not exactly quick. It took almost three hours to get to the planned 9km marker which ended up being 16km of riding with backtracking and diversions.
I'm not sure if I've actually visited any tiles by e-bike that I haven't been to by human power, but I'm less concerned about their legitimacy than the handful that I've bagged by driving to a racing circuit and riding round in circles.
How often do folk tile just a race circuit? Which would be a handful of tiles at very most.
Should I be doing something like a race track, it would be part of a longer ride anyway.