Advent and Christmas Spinning

 

Would you consider Spinning to Carols? Or is your Spin session a Carol free zone?

Let us consider the possibilities (true meaning in brackets):

Hark the herald Spinners sing

(do we sing whilst we spin?)

While Spinners watched their bikes by night

(is it necessary? When do most thefts take place?)

God rest ye merry spinners

(are we Spinning to rest?)

The first nowell the Spinner would say

Was to certain poor outdoor cyclists

In snow and mud as they lay

(aren’t we warm in here?)

As with gladness Spinners of old

(some of us might be a bit past it)

Spinners from the realms of glory

(This is what we would like to be)

Get  on the bike, happy Christmas and new year –look forward to the Olympics in Rio may be?

Our fair weather friends?

At the Spinning class I attend we have had a recent influx of returners - they were last with us in February or March. Then the nights grew lighter and the weather warmer and they became part of the group of people who barrel round the country side on bicycles. Now the clocks have gone back to Greenwich Mean Time, or  may be just a little before:  they  re -joined the Spinning class.  All sorts of jokes about fair weather riders were heard.  But in reality we are glad because every black clad cyclist on country lanes in the autumn dusk is an accident waiting to happen. So how much do the returners save the NHS?  Not to mention the saving of emotional energy and angst of people hurting themselves or the pain of bereavement.

Could we approach the Government with the idea of setting up Spinning studios to get cyclists off the road?  The Government does prevention on everything else: Cancer, Obesity, Car accidents, mental health and Tax Evasion, why not add cycle accidents to the list of something that should be prevented?  Set up more spinning studios, train more instructors, promote Spinning in Health Centres and schools. Perhaps London’s reluctance to host the tour de France was something to do with a covert policy of prevention: to get cyclists off the road and a way to reduce the figures in the A and E departments of the Metropolis.

So we wonder what next spring will bring: will the fair weather cyclists be out again or can we Spinners persuade them to stay with us?  But then those first few rows in our class are always sometimes empty.  Why? Several theories have been suggested but our instructor has come up with the best: those bikes are empty because of Fizzy Fridays –people who have too much to drink on a Friday night and cannot get up on Saturday for Spinning.  Another task for the NHS?

Music – does it matter?

Have you noticed that every Spinning instructor comes with their own preference of music? Of course that is the case – we are all individuals.  But do they gather round themselves people in the class who like to Spin to a certain sound?  Does it help if the music we spin to is energetic or soporific?  Do we expect to leave the Spinning studio as high as if we had drunk a can of Red Bull or as mellow so that we could spend the rest of the day asleep?

I do not know whether anyone has studied this –do class numbers dwindle if the music becomes more down beat?  Do they go up if the latest hits are played?  A friend and I tried Spinning to Songs from the shows, but others regarded us as slightly odd and we quickly resumed the hit music of the classes we attended.  Where does that leave people like me who like to Spin in silence with just the purr of the bike and a good book for company?

If you are trying to read you cannot do jumps,  sprints or press –ups on the bike but time passes quickly and the legs can get adequate exercise, more than being an arm chair reader anyway.  If you are in a class is the music part of the class – you have a one or two song climb then a recovery song or is it background (or really foreground but everyone is ignoring that aspect)?  Do you enjoy spinning more if you feel like you have been in a night club afterwards or recaptured the songs of a forgotten or mis-spent youth?

Spinning bikes and press ups

Go on then be honest do you prefer a Spinning session where you do press-ups on the bike and stretch your arms or do you prefer just pedalling?  How can we use the bike to exercise the whole body.  Classes are now advertised that boast that the whole time is spent on the bike rather than with exercise before we climb aboard and then after we have dismounted. Can it feel fraudulent to say you have bee spinning when in truth some of the time was spent doing things for which no bike is necessary?

It begs the questions though: are those of us who are keen spinners the best con merchants around? We tell everyone we like cycling (of the indoor variety) when in reality we are pulling our bodies in and out of shape in ways that no-one would consider on a road bike. Then there is the fact that we have no destination on our journey other than pleasure and relatively few mechanical worries.  We do not need protection against the elements nor safety gear like helmets. So as cyclists are we fraudsters?

Consider the question the other way up: as Spinners we do ride a bike, we can wear Lycra , we talk about climbing to the top. We ask one another about our enjoyment of the ride. We like to regulate our environment.  No one on a road bike likes cycling in the rain. No one on a Spinning bike likes spinning in the summer without air conditioning.  Are we closer to our road cycling cousins than we think?

Countryside Spinners

For a moment let us imagine that us Spinners have metamorphosed into Road cyclists: In the twinkling of an eye we throw our cheap plastic water bottles into the hedge rows, we ride up the middle of the road because after all the roads belong to us don’t they? And if not up the middle of the road we are part of a peloton that occupies the whole road.  We gesticulate at any motorist or tractor driver who has the temerity to consider passing.

As Spinners, along with many other cyclists we do not behave quite like this and as such we should be counted as lovers of the countryside perhaps more than is obvious. For with the road cyclists farmers and local land users often complain of the large numbers of discarded water bottles and other debris.  Do Spinners have more respect for the countryside in that it is home for many and the work place for some?

What is the human cost for those who charge around the countryside on bicycles?  Let us meet Gladys, newly widowed and well on into her eighties. A short while after the funeral of her husband of sixty one years the family celebrated the wedding of Gladys’ grand daughter - a greatly planned and eagerly anticipated occasion even in the suffering of Gladys’ husband’s final illness.  The glorious wedding day passed and Gladys set out happily one summer afternoon to deliver wedding cake to her neighbours across the road.

Just down an incline leading into the village hurtled a vision in Lycra on a racing bike.  Unable to stop in time he hit Gladys leaving her with a fractured pelvis at the road side.  Neighbours rushed to her aid, she was hospitalised and several weeks later has now returned home with the help of a  Zimmer frame and family support.

Gladys’ case is surely a way of showing the merits of Spinning?

The cyclist who hit Gladys was in a time trial, the speed of those competitors entering the village was thirty mph, what chance did she have?

Gladys daughter in law is in my Spinning Group. Enough said.

 

 

Is Spinning “green”?

What do you think? 

Is Spinning Green, environmentally friendly or a caricature of bicycling around the countryside with the wind in your hair?  Spinners can get in their cars, drive to a leisure centre for a class , where they hear music and see flashing lights then drive home –not the most environmentally friendly activity you may think?  But compare and contrast them with cyclists on the open road: causing hold ups in traffic and throwing their used water bottle into the hedges.  This must damage the natural habitat of the hedgerow and be a hazard to livestock.  What is more, are these water bottles so cheap that they cannot be made from biodegradable plastic can they?

Let us go a little further what about the Lycra worn by so many who pedal the lanes on expensive state of the art cycles.  Lycra or Spandex or Elastane is a stretchy and allegedly forgiving fabric first developed in 1958 as an alternative to rubber in corsets.  Now it is used in figure hugging gear for many cyclists, quite a renaissance.  But is it environmentally friendly?  Can you call a polyurethane synthetic fibre green?  It might be a little closer to the green tag if it contains some wool or cotton but what is the carbon foot print of such stuff, dare we even contemplate it?

Spinners of course can wear Lycra, and some do but is it necessary when Spinning takes place well away from mud and exhaust fumes? Nest time we’ll tackle the water bottle problem.  Most of my spinning colleagues don’t throw them at the wall, why should the cyclists throw them into fields?

Do you spin it out?

Why do you spin?  May be you like being on a bike, you can barely remember a time in your life when you were not able to ride a bike. Do you like cycling but have fallen out with traffic: the fumes and irate drivers hooting at you?  Do you spin because you feel safer inside than on the road?

Has mechanical failure –punctures the chain coming off miles from home deterred you from cycling on the road. Perhaps you spin, like me because someone asked you to try it.  You were attracted like a magpie to shining metal, to the exertion, the loud disco music and flashing lights, a way to celebrate youth or to recapture lost youth?

The atmosphere of a Spinning studio is miles from a country lane in autumn mist with rain spitting from all directions or on a baking summer day pregnant with exhaust fumes and in the heat of the noon day sun.  People spin for a plethora of reasons –is this why you like it?  The eclectic mix of the sporty Lycra clad enthusiast with the once a month “I’ll try it out brigade”.

I became a spinner, rather an indoor cycler with a history of riding a bike only because it was the simplest way to undertake short journeys.  It gets me seen in the spring and summer and stops a longer stay in the cold if I walked in the winter.  I am enthralled by the music, the order or lack of it than can be applied in spinning.  It is rather like being in a car in neutral –everything is decoupled, reality becomes far away even though I never leave the relative confines of the indoor bike.

It is a pastime for the gregarious but also for the loner, for the lover of the loud and of the silent, for the studious and those escaping from pressures of revision or office politics.  For all who spin it is a haven, a safe yet exciting world apart from normal life –if there is such a thing.

I am not going to try to put together routines of music or patterns for climbs, runs and sprints in this Blog nor am I going to compare and contrast the merits and deficiencies of one machine over another.  I aim to explore why indoor cycling has become so popular and what makes it special for  those who do it is it simply a form of burning off energy or does it have a capacity to release people from the rigours of twenty first century life?

Tell me why do you Spin?