Inventing Spin

6:17 am. An eternity ago I looked over my shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was 6:16 am. I should be out on the road and not in spinning in this Spin class. Based on the first painful 17 minutes of this could turn out to be the slowest hours of my life. Over in Europe the boys in the Tour de France are three or four hours into today’s stage 13 in the Pyrenees. I should be out on the road but instead I’m Spinning.

I invented Spin. Not the exercise bike but getting people together on a bunch of stationary bikes and having a workout together. I’m not running for President or saving the planet like Al Gore but I did invent something, like Al. Or, I’m just spinning this, like Al. We called it Turbo and we didn’t have music or mirrors. In place of the aerobics styled overly peppy instructor (and dj) we had something called a “coach”. This was in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with the triathlon team I co-founded, coached and chartered, Tri-Team Peninsula. We had no idea we had invented something called Spinning, but we did. Somebody else, of course, would market it and make millions.

But we were doing spin before spin was spin. Way before it became a fitness club fad like aerobics, yoga or tae bo-pilates-kickboxing-step-abs-cardio-sculpt-blast class. Tri-Team bought 25 turbo machines and some sets of Kreitler rollers for a few of us purists. Each Wednesday night we did an hour “Spinning” and followed that up with a 3-6 mile run to simulate a triathlon transition. Instead of the weight room style fitness exercise bikes we used turbo-trainers allowing you to make your regular bike into a stationary bike by attaching the rear wheel to a flywheel and drum. You adjusted the tension or difficulty by either shifting gears or by adjusting the tension on the flywheel in back.

Rick Sutton was the Turbo coach. He often rode a turbo during the workouts but he never faced the group like Spin instructors do. He lined up with everyone else and then barked out orders like a team leader in a real peloton. Most of the time however Sergeant Rick treated turbo like a swim coach treats a swim workout. He paced the deck, yelled out splits, looked at body position, screamed encouragement to the group or called out people by name. Those workouts were never boring.

This one is. I’m in the back corner of the dimly lit, beating Equinox Spin Studio. The instructor this morning, Matt, is at the front of class facing the wearied Monday morning Spinners. There are mirrors along the front wall that we, the peloton, face. From where I sit tucked in the corner and angling my bike I’m out of range of seeing myself. But I’m in a great position to watch everyone else watch themselves chasing their imaginary nemesis. Matt doles out a continual stream of tidbits of advice urging us incrementally higher up our percentage of effort and closer and closer to the imaginary rider out on the road ahead.

Instructor Matt has a microphone on the end of a little boom anchored from his ear. His voice is slicing through the music with instruction as well as visualization queues. “We are on a long straight road. Out ahead of us is another lone rider. We are going to catch him increasing our effort each 3-5 minutes by 5%. We start controlled at 60-65% and we’ll move it up to an all-out effort.” One song is fading out and Matt works his Ipod click-wheel. A techno-fied Bee-Gee’s song pounds into the room. He says “Let’s go get that other rider”.

I’m fighting myself about whether the clock has stopped and if seconds and minutes are still ticking by. They are. Time is moving. But time is moving slowly. Of course, that isn’t true. Time is, like change, constant. It doesn’t go on break, speed up or slow down it doesn’t keep track of itself. We do that. This morning I’m fighting time, pushing time, doing anything I can to not surrender to time.

I’m having a tough time with the visualization. I decide to add in some cool wind. This helps and I put my head down and relax my arms, neck and breathing. My legs go to work. I add more mental pictures. To my left there is a lake. The road is flat but I’m passing through a plateau in the mountains. There are white caps on the lake and the wind feels like it is coming off the hills, over the water and rising from the pavement. The peaks rise around me their summits disappearing into clouds. I look over to my right and see that a 200 pound woman has pulled up alongside me. I’m not imagining this. She is compact, breathing hard and close. I settle in with her. She appears confident in her bike handling at this pace and on this flat stretch of road. She is wearing a heart monitor. It reads 160 beats a minute. I marvel at her 60-65%. I give her a nod and a smile. She heaves out a nervous half smile obviously after her own lone rider up the road.

There are many styles in Spin class. Most of the styles have little to do with biking with cadences bouncy and too high or knee-busting and too low. Nearly everyone is sitting like upright children in high chairs, handlebars draped in white cotton gym towels to collect the spills and sweat that will soon have every soaked and stained. I keep my head down and keep moving.

The imagining works and I finally claw my way up to the rider I earlier conjured. The sweat is pouring off me. The woman next at me looks at my straining face and smirks and nods again. I catch a glimpse of her heart monitor. 160 beat a minute and holding. I should be in better shape. I should be stronger. I will be stronger. The clock moves by 6:30 am and I hear the instructor say there are hills coming up. I look over at Mrs. 160 and wonder what hills she imagines ahead. I know mine will be a tornado of switchbacks and steep pitches. I sit up and grab some water and prepare to begin climbing as soon as the instructor says “go”.