It’s back!

Twas bad
My first two spins after returning from holiday were, er, not enjoyed. The bikes, the exercises, the music were all fine – Andy dropped in the William Tell overture for jumps and climbs and The Orb’s Little fluffy clouds – a brilliant track as far as I’m concerned! But I was just plodding along, slowly going through the motions, with hardly enough energy to turn the pedals. I guess that during our holiday I’d got used to slow, long cycles, rather than spinning’s breakneck surges and intense climbs. But I don’t truly believe it’s the explanation. Maybe I was just on a post-holiday down.

Getting better
Then came Sunday, and the Tour de Forth. When we finished I was quite high – flapping around full of mental energy, even though parts of my body felt as though they’d worked.

By the way, here’s some photos:

On Monday, spinning felt much better. My legs had better ideas of what they were supposed to do. No stratospheric feelings, no mental mayhem but just gentle enjoyment and reawakened belief that I could get good feelings from this sweaty madness.

It’s back!
And then tonight it was back! My legs worked fairly well (I still can’t run at any speed out of the saddle), the music was fun and full-on (including Hell’s Bells and the William Tell overture for the final set of sprints and surges), the bike was just right – plenty of turn between recovery and ‘pedals-won’t move’, with the balance between resistance and cadence working for me and by the end I was up there. Not the most stratospheric I’ve been after spinning but up, happy and enjoying it!

This is why I spin – why I’ll drag myself out in the evenings, even if the rain and snow are hammering down, even if I have far too much MSc or freelance work to do, why I’ll sweat my bits off in small room full of humidity and noise, why I’m happy to deal with dripping kit and squelchy shorts night after night. More often than not it’s just fun, and there’s always the chance of something cosmic.

Of course there are other reasons – it’s good for me, it allows me to hope (or should that be ‘pretend’?) that one day I’ll be more than a commuter-cyclist, it’s safe cycling to music, it’s an excuse to wear the brightest lycra I can find and of course the Lifescycle folk are caring, encouraging, professional but fun people to be around. The attention they pay to new spinners, and to the rest of us, comes not simply from ‘hey, we’ll keep this customer if he or she has a good experience’ but because they’re genuinely enthusiastic about people. But I have to acknowledge that I’m a selfish bugger and that I just enjoy the whole deal. Thank you in large lumps to all the Lifescycle crowd!