“Let’s go, fast leg.”This is what’s being shouted at me and my fellow bikers in a darkened room. I’m spin biking, which, for the uninitiated, is like being in a nightclub on an exercise cycle. They turn the lights off and pump out dance music while shouting instructions. It’s a lot of standing and pedalling, ‘hovering’ which is crouching forward, turning up the gradient so peddling becomes heavier, then more ‘fast leg’ peddling.
It’s a nice gym tucked away on a mews street in Marylebone. I’ve not joined, we’ve got vouchers, which means as a non-member you can’t book the spin class. It’s usually fully booked so each time I have to wait outside the class until the right time and am a substitute for some lazy person who’s not turned up. I step into the pitch black room and hope the instructor will turn the lights on so I can find my way to a spare bike.
Yesterday evening a girl came into the class with a musical instrument in its case and put it behind her bike. I liked that. If I had an instrument on me I’d use it as an excuse to not turn up or put it in my locker and spend the whole class wondering if it’s been stolen. I liked the way it suggested she’d accomplished two activities that day. Me, I only managed the spin.
After the Saturday class I feel nicely warmed up under the ice cold blue sky as I walk the streets of Marylebone with their desolate Saturday afternoon feel, while the mass rush of Oxford street is only a few streets away. I go for a coffee, sometimes at the Nordic bakery, sometimes closer to home.
Either way it feels like the most deserved coffee possible.
