Today was the start of a new season at LifesCycle, so to celebrate appropriately they’d set up 4 back-to-back rides. (Well, there were 15-minute changeover gaps between them…). The rides were

• Frankie goes to NZ – with Martin*, Josh and Alan
  This ride will launch you into an afternoon of Spinning fun and hard work with great sounds and energy throughout from the LifesCycle big guns.
• Into the Mountains – Hugh and Team
  An hour of thumping beats with Hugh and Richard ….taking you into the lifesCycle mountains. Attacks and surges bringing everybody up the steep slopes together.
• Ethno World Ride – Izzy, Jeannie and the Tribal Team
  Think jungle, world and ethnic fusion in a tribal beats based ride for all. Great sound, motivating beats and a great filmscape to continue your fantastic journey with LifesCycle
• Comfortably Numb – Andy Hunter
  And to finish, bringing it all home with the best of Pink Floyd in sounds, visuals and motivation.

*Martin pulled his back just before the big day and so couldn’t ride.

I had fantacised about doing all four rides but Elly and I came to our senses and opted for the final two.

Izzy and Jeannie led the class through a ‘typical’ Tarahumara day. Early in the morning, they were up and running while we warmed up on our bikes and then tried to catch up and keep up with them, through jungle, rough terrain, up a canyon-wall path and on up to tonight’s mountain-top campsite. The Tarahumara runners were always ahead of us, despite them being on foot and us being on fast mountain bikes. However, this was [for us] a good thing: after all the jumps and sprints, the Tarahumara had sorted the campsite, put up the shelters and cooked a meal for us cycle-bound slowcoaches! The last push up to the campsite was filled with shouts of encouragement from Jeannie and Izzy, exhortation effortlessly moving from voice to voice. [Out of character: how on earth does anyone have the energy to even whisper when putting so much effort into cycling?] Lots of whoops and yells, digging the last of our energy from our reserves so we could make it up the mountain and then collapse into the shelters the Tarahumara had prepared.

Time for a quick banana or two, a change of shirt, fantasy about naughty things and we’re off again! Old favourites (including a mad mix of Another brick in the wall, part 2 into a storming dance track [I think it’s by the Pink Boyz] and the ever-wonderful emotion-churning of Comfortably Numb), combined with a reggae mix of One of these days, culminating in the love-space-opera-rock mayhem of Echoes – a audio-visual trip through the career of Messrs Barrett, Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright. All of this the background to jumps, sprints, runs, dripping sweat, emotions flying out through the legs, into the pedals and emptying us mere mortals!

I think this was one of the quickest hours I’ve ever experienced. After cycling home, I sat in a drained trance. I think this is the appeal of spinning. What else would get a slob like me who naturally sits in front of a mac (almost always with graphics-tablet stylus in one one hand, mug of tea in the other), working his flab and making his clothes absolutely sodden?