Spinning for Sport Relief - Pulse racing, adrenaline pumping for Sport Relief

With "Lady Gaga" booming through the speakers and wishing that I'd indulged in my usual full-fat morning latte, relaxed with my feet up on the sofa, I found myself sat on the familiar and excrutiatingly hard saddle of a stationary bike at my local gym, Body Works West at 8:30am on Sunday morning peddling furiously through the first 'Rise and Shine' spin session of a 12-hour long spinning bonanza, all in aid of Sport Relief. I'd intially only committed to 4-hours but then, somehow, managed to convince myself that peeling the layers of wet clothing off my back four times in one day would somehow be more painful  and uncomfortable than actually cycling all 12 spin sessions... so instead settled for a compromise and cycled 11 back-to-back-super-sweaty-spin classes, winning a months free membership to the gym, getting a snazzy David Beckham designed Sport Relief t-shirt and contributed to raising over GBP 1,500 for Sport Relief in the process..!

With each class that followed, the lactic acid burned in my legs as the instructors bellowed, 'TURN UP THE RESISTANCE', my backside ached, and the sweat pouring down from my forehead would burn my eyes and the palms of my hands throbbed as I gripped the handlebars. I would swear on an hourly basis that the next class would be my last class before going home and indulging in a well deserved shower and a Big Mac... But then something like, Abba "Dancing Queen" or the "Rocky theme song" would  boom over the sound system or Remzi would appear with his usual charming smile, enticing us with Turkish Delights with his 'Turkish' themed spin class and I would dig deep into my 'reserves' of strength and propel myself to continue on...

I nearly lost the plot at the 11th hour (literally!) with Simon's interval training to deep trance music. It sounded appealing and straightforward, but then the additional complexity was added when every 3 minute interval a shrill 'beeep' cut through the deep beats indicating that we were to turn up the resistance on our bikes. This happened 20 times so by the end I felt like my legs were pushing through rapidly hardning layers of concrete in the middle while I stood up and sat down at 10 second intervals trying to find a mildly comfortable position on a saddle which already felt like concrete.

The 12th and final class of the Spin-a-thon, from 7:30 - 8:30pm left me with a great sense of achievement. It felt fantastic to have been part of something for such a worthwhile cause and also to feel that all of the training from the past year had paid off.  It was also great to have met some new people at the gym. Great exercise, great music, great people, and a great cause - what better way to spend a Sunday?!

Sport Relief is a biennial charity event from Comic Relief, in association with BBC Sport, which brings together the worlds of sport and entertainment to raise money to help vulnerable people in both the UK and the world's poorest countries.

A very special thank you to the staff at BWW for organising such a worthwhile event and to Marc Fox for kindly letting me use some of his photos from the day.