Spinning around

Spinning class
1 hour

After the weekend long run, I had a few issues with my knees (define 'issues' as not being able to make it to the end of the road to buy milk). I've decided, therefore, to give myself a few days off the street pounding and am investing my time in other training methods. Tonight, I joined the Serpentine Club for their weekly 'spinning' class - a new experience for me.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'spinning' it roughly translates as 'inducing heart attack via an exercise bike'.

When I first started running, I found it really difficult. I would be out of breath after running for no more than 5 minutes and wanted/needed to stop. I'm pleased to say that after not very much training at all, that feeling passes and you start to enjoy yourself. Taking the spinning class this evening was like the first time I ever went running. I thought I was going to pass out.

Spinning is nuts. Seriously. You are in a room full of exercise bikes facing the instructor, who has a microphone attached to his head so that he can talk to you while he pedals. He whacks on his favourite CD and you start biking. There is a knob on your bike in front of you that you turn clockwise to add more resistance to the fly wheel (and make the pedalling harder) and anti-clockwise to take it off (and go back to normal). The idea is that during the class, you simulate going up and down hills by adding and taking off resistance. Easy right? Well, no actually. It's bloody hard.

The instructor didn't let us pedal for long before putting us through a series of exercises:

Standing pedalling positions - where you get up off your seat and pedal upright and then leaning forward (a killer) adding more resistance to make it extra fun.

Sprints - where you had to pedal as fast as you can for 30 seconds and then 60 seconds (with a short break in between, adding resistance as you go along).

Hill climbs - where you whack the resistance up, get up off your seat and pedal as hard as you can up a road which must be winding up Kilimanjaro.

Jumps - where you do sets of 16 (16 beats standing up pedalling and then 16 sitting down) repeated 5 times followed by sets of 8 (the same, only 8 beats hard pedalling and rest) repeated 5 further times.

And all the time, you are being told to pedal faster and with more resistance on.....

We were all told to bring a towel to the session and I can see why. I have never sweated so much in my life - not running, not playing Andrew at squash (and he will testify that I sweat quite a lot!), not even on the dancefloor in Ziggy's at 4am (big shout-out to the York readership!) I had a bottle of water and I'm sure the entire contents passed through me during that hour.

At the end, we warmed down (mistakenly to Chris De Burgh's Lady In Red, to my great amusement) and got a shower - the bargain session cost only £3 and we got to use the facilities at Fitness First in Covent Garden where the class took place.

There were times during the session (well, most of it actually) when I promised myself that I wouldn't go again. But I said that about running once - and I'm determined to give it another go. I'm going to try and go next week for the last session before xmas and then, time allowing, try and go at least a couple of times a month in the new year.

Consider this my first new year's resolution.