Gym Bike Challenge

After a long day at the office we were about to head home when my Chief Clerk challenged me to a duel on the gym bikes - how far can you go in 40 minutes (I wanted to make it a nice round hour but we had a social event to go to and there wasn't enough time). We all know that gym bikes don't actually replicate the position of any normal bike, but seem to be based on the geometry of my sister's Raleigh Shopper from 1975 (similar to the above), and have the widest saddles that were clearly designed for maximum DIScomfort, but a challenge is a challenge and we duly headed off for the gym.

Gym bikes are also odd in that it doesn't matter what level you have it on it is the cadence you spin that determines how far the machine records you have travelled. This was therefore all about the highest cadence you could maintain for 40 minutes. The rules were set - Level 12 on the Random programme, and go as hard and as fast as you can. And then we were off. On the road I will maintain a cadence of between 90 and 95 rpm, but this was going to be a completely different exercise. Quickly settling in to a cadence of around 118 through the early, easy levels, I watched my heart rate steadily rise until it was at about 90% of max, and we were still only 5 minutes into the challenge! After about 7 minutes it dawned on me that this was going to hurt - a lot!

The minutes ticked by and pools of sweat were now gathering on the floor; a couple of sneaky looks across at my colleague and I was pleased to see that I was ahead. After 20 minutes the gap was at about 0.2 of a mile, so not enough to relax. It seems that at about the 23 minute stage, my opponent went through a bit of a bad patch and by 25 minutes the gap had stretched to 0.6 of a mile. My HR was now round 95-96% of max and it was hurting. At 32 mins the Gym Bike showed it had a sense of humour and the Random programme threw it's BIG challenge at me - 3 solid bars of resistance. HR was now at 99% of max - 178bpm! I was melting at this point but another sneaky glance at my rival gave me the confidence that I had him beat and I pushed hard all the way to the finish.

As the end drew close I was hoping I could reach 17 recorded miles and put in a big effort over the last minute, but in the end just failed at 16.99 miles in 40 minutes, for a gym bike average speed of 25.485mph and a winning margin of 0.8 of a mile.

So fellow bloggers, how about a gym bike challenge? Level 12 on the Random programme, and see how far you can go. It's just a bit of (painful) fun and relies on your own honesty and integrity to self-police and abide by the very simple rules. At least you can't draft (take note Coach Roy!). So, how far can YOU go?