During an email exchange among indoor cycling instructors earlier this week, I was reminded of an odd happening in my class a couple of weeks ago.
I’ve had my Friday, 6:00 AM class for almost 6 years now. We’ve got some great energy in the room built over the years. When I was first given the class there were only 4 people. Now it is waiting list only and the 4 original attendees are still riding strong. This is one of those situations as an instructor where you are so comfortable with the group that you can say almost anything and get away with it. It is a great feeling and a class I look forward to every week.
A couple of weeks ago, I enter the room as usually and find people warming-up and chatting away. I say hi to those I pass as I enter the cycling studio from the back and make my way to the podium. I hang 11″x17″ charts every week that show a graphical representation of the ride profile. Everyone waits to see what torture is in store for the morning. I’ve got some pre-class music cranking and the banter has already begun.
I glance over to one of the bikes in the front row and notice an iPhone perched on the top of the handlebars. No one was on the bike or near it. Everyone assumed, like I did, that someone was using their cell phone to reserve their much desired spot. The class begins and there sits the iPhone, by itself. No owner. No towel. No one says anything, but we all wait in anticipation for the crazed person who will eventually dart into the room – who is now also late for class.
Five minutes into the warm-up and it is obvious that no one will be joining the iPhone. Apparently it was left there from the Thursday night class. So considering it is 6 in the morning and the coffee has not quite kicked in, I decided to treat the iPhone as if it was a rider.
The heckling begins. I start by accusing the phone for not working hard enough during the first set of drills and then admonish it for texting friends during our intermediate recovery. At one point I went over to the bike and turned up the resistance and acted as if I enjoyed watching the poor phone struggle “yeah, that’s what I’m talking about…I want you to push down hard on those buttons until your screen fogs up!”
Near the end of the workout as we approached the top of a steep 8-minute climb it became obvious that the phone was losing coverage. Multiple times it called for more power as it struggled for the last 60 seconds, but there was no answer. ”That’s right…you ain’t got no app for that!” After class I did reassure the iPhone that if it kept coming back, we would eventually transform that soft squishy cover to a hard shell case.
While I was reliving the memory with my comrade instructors, I was warned that it is against policy to touch a riders resistance during class. My bad.
Apparently, the iPhone doesn’t have an app for indoor cycling, but Droid Does.
