Spinning

Maytrees min having asked me to accompany her to the spinning gym in Richmond last Sunday I decided to give it a go or perhaps a better phrase would be "a whirl."

I vaguely recollect that when visiting  maytrees min  whilst  she worked in Philadelphia for 10 months or so, that she would at breakfast time, leave me with a copy of the Washington Post and a croissant, whilst she went off "spinning" before her work duties commenced though quite what the exercise was I had little idea, until now.

Two people from Richmond London did I understand, either design the spinning concept or commenced a spinning gym there having imported the idea from the USA. There are now such gyms in Richmond, Ealing, Moorgate and one other in the City so the concept is proving successful.

Whatever the  history, today's spinning gym in Richmond is housed in an impressive new building. One has to book at least one day in advance a place on one of the stationary bikes at the gym. Although initially last Saturday evening our session was cancelled because of a power cut, somewhat later during Saturday night we both received a text message to say the session had been restored.

Despite the text messages of the previous day some 25 people still turned up for the 45 minute session itself illustrating how popular spinning has become.

The concept involves a gym containing some 50 fixed bicycle-type machines which are set in a semicircle in front of two large cinema style machines. The gym provides special shoes to be worn and each participant proceeds to the numbered bike which has been reserved for him or her. The cinema screens depict a Tour de France type race with the bikes numbered as on the participants' machines. The bikes have 18 gears and there is a young athletic leader who starts the 'cycling' off  and calls  out the gear one should be in, going up to 18 gears or down to 10, depending upon whether one is going up high mountains or racing to the finish.

The workout was for me hugely hard. Both men and women were participating though the average age I would guess might be under 30 or thereabouts.

By the end of the session I was dropping and could not have continued for much longer. Interestingly, maytrees min came first in the group and although my own place was 24th, father and daughter did pretty well together, I thought.

My own headline stats were:

Thank you for choosing Digme Fitness today - we hope you achieved great things! Here are some stats you might find useful from your Indoor Cycling workout. You can use this data to track your progress. If you have any questions, don`t hesitate to ask us.

• Cycled at an average of 65 Watts with a maximum of 197 Watts at peak.

• Burned approximately 198 calories.

• Produced 155.2 KJ total energy.

• Rode with an average cadence of 67 RPM with a maximum of 111 RPM at peak.

• Total Spivi Points: 140