My new Years Resolution was to say 'eff it, why not' rather than 'eff it, I can't be arsed'. This resulted in me going to a spinning class with a friend in the wharf.
For those who don't know spinning, it's a room full of stationary bikes, a very loud sound system, and an instructor who tells you what to do, e.g when to pedal hard, when to change position and when to crank up the resistance. It does seem a very good way to get fit.
However:
I missed the initial instructions, and had no idea what I was doing
The flywheel has no freewheel, so like a fixed bike, if you don't move your legs fast enough, you can get bucked out of the saddle.
It's very very noisy (the music).
I'm too used to normal cycling, so as soon as I got on the bike, it felt very strange cycling with no resistance so I immediately increased the resistance to a level I was happy with, a big mistake. Little did I know every few minutes the the instructor would say something about 'taking up water', and motion turning the resistance knob to increase the pressure. So every time she did it, I'd turn the knob a full turn. Subsequently I discovered she was actually saying 'turn it up a quarter'. So not only did I start at a resistance that was far too high (the resistance I'd normally cycle at), I was then compounding the error by increasing the resistance 4 times too much.
This led to me struggling to turn the pedals, while everyone else was spinning away like mad. Eventually with 5 mins of the class left I figured out what was going and cranked the resistance back down.
A lot of it feels totally alien to real cycling, e.g out of the saddle, pedaling like mad, but only being allowed to use 2 fingers of each hand to support your upper body on the bars etc, or being off the saddle, but then lowering your bum so that it's now lower than the saddle and then pedaling like mad.
I don't think I've ever sweat so much in 40 minutes before.
Would I go again?
Probably.
If any fixed riders want to build leg speed for high speed descents, I strongly recommend a spinning class...
After the class, I still had to cycle 7 miles home, and following the ludicrous resistance levels I'd been trying to push in the class, cycling home was a breeze.