There is something very unnatural about spinning. 29 adults in a room, voluntarily - actually paying for the privilege, cycling on exercise bikes, listening to terrible music without any melody, while being shouted at by some hyperactive bloke at the front. (If I thought spinning was going to increase my Danish vocab I was sadly mistaken... "to minutter, kun to mere" "ti, ni, otte, syv..." "Kom nu, kom nu" well you get the picture).
The premise seems to be spinning leads to higher fitness levels... But at what cost? It has a very organised religious feeling to it - and I guess most of the people in the room are not the types to go to mass every morning of this Lenten period. So its modern society's mission.
A
mission was something people of my local parish in Caragh (Co. Kildare, Ireland) looked forward to. It was in effect a week of early rising to go to church to get stern sermons from scary priests. I'm not sure why they called this "the mission" but perhaps because some of the priests had been in Africa or somewhere foreign saving the poor unfortunate souls, bless them!
So for one week the church would be jam packed at an ungodly hour, 7am! There was little singing and flailing about, this was catholic Ireland after all, but people were generally made to feel guilty for most anything that crossed the priests minds. The end result was after a week of self loathing, self questioning and realising how damn miserable we deserve to be given the multitude of sins we were committing - people ended the week feeling great because the mission was over! Thank God for that, we can go back to normal and stop all the self-this and self-that!
So I digress, but 29 people, all 20 to 35 year olds, none obese or in need of an hours exercise while been shouted at, with nothing to show at the end but a relief that it was over is scarily like the catholic church. In other words banging your head against a wall, so you can enjoy the relief when you stop. Perverse but you'd be amazed that young healthy and otherwise normal people in a gym near you are doing just that.
Or maybe I'm just bitter that none of the other "spinners" had to cycle the 8 miles home afterwards....
Back running tomorrow! And decided to alternate the photo from the biography page with famous bearded men... Jonty came up with the inspiration for Brian Blessed... Blessed are the spinners, they shall inherit sore bums....
Amen.
