Spin Dating

I am not a newcomer to the world of spinning having dabbled a little last year in the lung gasping, arse breaking exercise that is the spin class.  There is nowhere to hide on a watt bike with the numbers and cutesy little graphs staring you in the face.  You can look at  your watts, your calories, speed, a peanut shaped graph showing quite clearly that your left leg is doing more work than your right, and indeed your revs per minute.  It was a bit of a surprise to me (to understate) to find the instructor advising our baseline cadence should be 90rpm.  Previously I had considered that a bit of a sprint.  Always one to listen to teacher, however, I attempted to plateau at 90rpm between efforts, and tried to convert this into the outdoor world of commuting and mountain biking.  Previously, I'd always been a bit of a grind it up the hills kind of a girl.  Now, I had more options.

The next thing the spinning classes taught me was Out of Saddle Climbing.  This was a whole world of horror.  I wanted to die, or to throw up or to faint but none of these things actually happened.  Instead, I learned how to come out of the saddle, what gear to use, what position to take and what leg speeds were possible.  Now, I enjoy it.  Short gnarly sections of steep uphill are a joy on the mountain bike as I launch out of the saddle, giving the guys behind a view of me shakin' my arse, shakin' my arse, shakin' my arse.  I like to disseminate pleasure to the world.

Spinning classes are very much a removal of excuses.  It's not a gym, but a pay as you go, and the classes take place in the building I work in.  There's not a reason in the world not to attend ... except ... cycle commuting.  If I bike to work, it stands to reason I don't spin, and I save myself the £4 for the spinning class, and about £2 in petrol for every day.  As the mornings and evenings get lighter the spinning classes start to become a thing of the past. Now, indeed, they are a punishment for not cycling to work.  An interesting punishment as every time I get on the spinning bike I push myself more, learn something more about my limits and ways to break through them.

Weirdly, my spinning tutor has offered to accompany me on a mountain bike ride.  A natural sceptic I ask myself why.  The options are thusly:

• he is a kind man who has seen my bruises and wishes to support my skills development
• he is horribly fit and wants someone to bike with who makes him look good
• he has no mates and is desperate for biking buddies
• he finds me daft and funny and good entertainment with the possible bonus of getting to see me fall off
• he wishes to get horizontal with me
• hmm.

The Cult

So, as January 2011 dawned all fresh and hopeful with a blank calendar for a new year a friend of mine via facebook status sought followers to join her cult.  She proposed a weight loss / healthy living competition where anyone wishing to go up against their mates for a period of 10 weeks simply parted with a tenner to her, the cult leader, which would then be placed in a pot.  After 10 weeks a gold, silver and bronze medal would be awarded to the lucky winners.  The rules were simple - weights in kilograms because we're all too old to make sense of them and they don't seem real.  She would publish pretty graphs each week showing percentage body weight lost.  No rules on how to get there; whichever variant we pleased of the eat less, move more persuasion was legitimate.  Some talked about high GI diets but mostly we all did our own thing.

I realised early on that I'm not great at discipline over food, and didn't want to be a slave to a diet.  So, with the eat less option curtailed somewhat, although not ignored I went ahead with the second option; move more.  I planned to meet the government standard on the thing, 30 mins exercise 5 times a day and looked into how "exercise" was defined.  Raised heart rate and lungs in use.  OK, I could do that.

I tend to make excuses.  But I also have anal tendencies towards planning.  So every Sunday in January I sat down and planned out just how I was going to manage in the following 7 days to get to that amount of exercise in one week.  Before long I was doing spinning classes after work twice a week, and every weekend had a plan, whether it was a few hours walking, the geeky geocaching or a mountain bike ride.  If I wasn't going to do a spinning class I made sure I at least walked to the library.  Before too long, 3 hours exercise a week became 4 which became 5, which soon became 6 or 7.  6 seemed to be my minimum by the end of February.

With the increase in fuel prices something interesting started to happen.  Finally cycling to work had tangible savings to be made.  £2 a day in petrol for every return journey made by bike ... also, I reasoned, if I cycled then I would also not need the £4 a throw spinning class.  So, that's a saving of £6 every time I biked to work.

The weight loss "Cult" is going well; I'm in bronze position with the final weigh in tomorrow, reduction from 68.8 kilos to under 63 with any luck.  If I need a kick start from a plateau, I simply get on the bike.