SPIN CLASS KICKED redux

Okay, Spin Class usually kicks my ass, but today's was a hummer.

Heather, the instructor, played an interesting game that's
akin to indian runs*:

She broke the 24-bike room into 6 pursuit teams. While the
other 20 people were doing a circuit (sprint for 2 minutes,
upright running spin for 2 minutes, seated hill-climb for
2 minutes, standing hill-climb power-surge for 2 minutes)
the team that was "on" had to go through the same circuit
in 2 minutes (30 seconds per skill), then got the next 2
minutes to recover seated at race-pace while the next team
took its turn breaking away.

It got pretty wild. She was calling out the names every
30 seconds and stoking people to get up, sit down, change
resistance, etc. People were popping up and down and
everyone was pounding as hard as I've ever seen a full
class go. Totally steamed up the room. Super impressive
piece of work by a trainer.

Oh, and my team "won". Although, Heather picked the
winner by closing her eyes and selecting one of her
post-it notes with the team members at random...

But hey. Free Buzz-Bar[tm] as a trophy. Almond-Date.
Sounds tasty. I may frame it.

--Blair
"Maybe just the wrapper."

* - a training techique using an echelon formation,
sending the rearmost rider to the front at a sprint, then
the next one, through the entire ride. Not like rotating
the line, because only one bike is out of position at a
time, and it moves forward rather than dropping to the
rear after pulling.

Blair P. Houghton wrote:

Oh, and my team "won". Although, Heather picked the
winner by closing her eyes and selecting one of her
post-it notes with the team members at random...

The engineer in me cries out to fix this 'problem'. I have no doubt
this could be solved with some magnets, some reed switches or
inductive coils, a passle of AD sample boards and a modest PC chassis
for computing the totals and various statistical deviances for later
analysis.

What? Stop looking at me like that.

--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
Confidence is simply that quiet, assured feeling you have before you
fall flat on your face.
-- Dr. L. Binder

Dane Jackson wrote:
Blair P. Houghton wrote:

Oh, and my team "won". Although, Heather picked the
winner by closing her eyes and selecting one of her
post-it notes with the team members at random...

The engineer in me cries out to fix this 'problem'. I have no doubt
this could be solved with some magnets, some reed switches or
inductive coils, a passle of AD sample boards and a modest PC chassis
for computing the totals and various statistical deviances for later
analysis.

What? Stop looking at me like that.

I've been thinking about spin-rooms with PowerTaps
networked to displays so you can see your output and
everyone else's on the front wall.

But spin class isn't about competition. That'd just drive
away the people who need it most. The closest it should
get is what Heather did. Mock competition with no way to
decide who's winning or losing.

If the display was just on the bike, and accurate, it'd
go a long way to calibrating your resistance.

--Blair
"I also want an odometer."

Blair P. Houghton wrote:

I've been thinking about spin-rooms with PowerTaps
networked to displays so you can see your output and
everyone else's on the front wall.

But spin class isn't about competition. That'd just drive
away the people who need it most. The closest it should
get is what Heather did. Mock competition with no way to
decide who's winning or losing.

Bah!!!

"Conan! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

If the display was just on the bike, and accurate, it'd
go a long way to calibrating your resistance.

True, I suppose the varying resistances would make it hard anyway
to have any kind of meaningful comparison.

Though, if you added some cranks with a powertap...



--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
-- Harlan Ellison

But spin class isn't about competition. That'd just drive
away the people who need it most. The closest it should
get is what Heather did. Mock competition with no way to
decide who's winning or losing.

Bah!!!

"Conan! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

ummm. that's a paraphrase of Genghis Khaan
except that he also mentioned riding their horses.

--
mac the naïf

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:16:30 -0000, Dane Jackson wrote:
Blair P. Houghton wrote:

I've been thinking about spin-rooms with PowerTaps
networked to displays so you can see your output and
everyone else's on the front wall.

But spin class isn't about competition. That'd just drive
away the people who need it most. The closest it should
get is what Heather did. Mock competition with no way to
decide who's winning or losing.

Bah!!!

"Conan! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

Hey that's the motto of my rides! :-) Except that Gina tends to out
last some of us so it's the guys who quietly lamemnt. ;-)

Actually it should be worded:

"To crush your enemies -- See them dropped behind you and the hear their
lament slowly fade in the distance" :-) Now if I could only keep up
with the real racers!

--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:59:15 -0600, ,
Neil Cherry wrote:

Actually it should be worded:

"To crush your enemies -- See them dropped behind you and the hear their
lament slowly fade in the distance" :-) Now if I could only keep up
with the real racers!

Whatever happened to "slaughter them and their cattle, burn their
farms, salt their fields, poison their wells, rape their women and
sell their children into slavery." ?

That's _real_ conquest like Normans and Vikings (my ancestors) knew!

Realistically, it's not that different from what the US is doing in
Iraq and various other places ( AC 130s, depleted uranium, napalm,
thermobaric bombs, Agent Orange, cluster bombs, land mines, etc.)
--
zk

Zoot Katz wrote:
Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:59:15 -0600, ,
Neil Cherry wrote:

Actually it should be worded:

"To crush your enemies -- See them dropped behind you and the hear
their
lament slowly fade in the distance" :-) Now if I could only keep up
with the real racers!

Whatever happened to "slaughter them and their cattle, burn their
farms, salt their fields, poison their wells, rape their women and
sell their children into slavery." ?

That's _real_ conquest like Normans and Vikings (my ancestors) knew!

Realistically, it's not that different from what the US is doing in
Iraq and various other places ( AC 130s, depleted uranium, napalm,
thermobaric bombs, Agent Orange, cluster bombs, land mines, etc.)
--
zk

I can see into the future...and a post about a spin class is going to
turn to politics. I love spin class. It is so bizarre. The music,
the lights, the screaming your instructor is doing.......makes me feel
like I am back in the 60's watching my friends tripping.
All good things,
Maggie.

Alex Colvin wrote:
But spin class isn't about competition. That'd just drive
away the people who need it most. The closest it should
get is what Heather did. Mock competition with no way to
decide who's winning or losing.

Bah!!!

"Conan! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

ummm. that's a paraphrase of Genghis Khaan
except that he also mentioned riding their horses.

I actually was aware of that. But I imagine that I was going to have
a lot more people get the pop culture reference to a recent movie than
if I related it to Genghis Khan. Your mileage obviously varied.

It's funny, laugh.

--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
From the UML (User Mode Linux) anouncement:
Fixed a bug with lots of zombies causing a UML panic.
Now UML is much braver, it doesn't panic even if there
are lots of zombies all over the place!
Technology is funny sometimes, isn't it?

Zoot Katz wrote:
Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:59:15 -0600, ,
Neil Cherry wrote:

Actually it should be worded:

"To crush your enemies -- See them dropped behind you and the hear their
lament slowly fade in the distance" :-) Now if I could only keep up
with the real racers!

Whatever happened to "slaughter them and their cattle, burn their
farms, salt their fields, poison their wells, rape their women and
sell their children into slavery." ?

Slaughter them and their cattle - check
Burn the farms - check
Salt - Well, salt is heavy. And honestly they only used to salt portions
of the fields. Just enough to make their point really. Enough salt to
serious impact the fertility of the land is bulky and not likely to
just be sitting around in your saddlebags.

Poison their wells - Usually only done in desert regions, has a lot of
the same problems salting does.

Rape - again an old standard - check
Sell their children into slavery - outside of Africa and parts of Asia
the slavery market is illegal. Which is great for prices, but makes it
a pain to move the merchandise and what-not.

That's _real_ conquest like Normans and Vikings (my ancestors) knew!

Ahhh, the bad^H^H^Hgood old days.

--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison