Berkeley Blog

Why Should Cyclists Spin? Let Me Count the Ways.

At Happy Hour Fitness in Berkeley, where I take spinning class once a week, I’m the only spinner who regularly rides a bicycle -- both for commuting, because I don’t have a car, and recreation, because I love riding around the East Bay hills. Most of the people in my class don’t even have a bicycle, or if they do, prefer to spin indoors on a faux cycle that goes nowhere.

At the same time, most cyclists I know wouldn’t be caught dead in a spinning class unless it’s raining, which it doesn’t seem to do anymore in California.

But cyclists could really benefit from spinning class, as I have during the past year I’ve been attending Xabier Zapata’s rigorous 40-minute workout. Here are the ways my outdoor cycling has improved as a result of spinning at Happy Hour Fitness:

1. Smoother. My cadence is not only smoother but faster. That’s because Xabi’s linguistically incomprehensible but emotionally explicit exhortations and the rapid beat of his tunes make me accelerate at speeds I would never do on my own unless riding down a steep hill with a tailwind at my back. And because all the stationary bikes face a mirror, I notice whether one leg is lagging on the downbeat and so I can and do correct my form. Also, Xabi pays attention to form, so if you shake your hips too much or tighten your shoulders, he’ll call you out and tell you to relax, keep your core still, and focus all your energy on your legs.
2. Safer. Because we often ride standing up for the duration of what often seems like an endless tune, I can now easily ride up Berkeley hills standing up the entire time with my brain on automatic. That frees my real brain to be on lookout for cars, garbage trucks, deer, potholes, and the other dangers that riding on the open road is heir to. The result is that spinning has made me a safer rider because I can pay full attention to the road and less to my formerly aching body.
3. Stamina. Although spinning class rarely lasts more than 40 minutes, because it’s so intense, I break out in a Niagara Falls of sweat within the first 10 minutes. As a result, it’s increased my endurance for my weekend outdoor ride from two to three hours, because two hours doesn’t seem enough anymore. Earlier this year, I climbed Mt. Diablo – a peak that’s over 3,000 feet and 10 miles of climbing – and not a single mile was as challenging as the first 10 minutes of one of Xabi’s classes.
4. Slimmer. Oh yes, there’s the caloric output as well: Xabi claims one can lose 500 calories for a session of spinning. He might be right, as I’ve lost a few pounds in the past year and haven’t changed my diet. Just looking around at the other spinners, I notice most of them have lost weight too, or if they were slim to begin with, they haven’t gained anything. And as any cyclist knows, the lighter you are, the easier it is to go up hills.
5. Sanity. Knowing I can get past the first 10 minutes of class and actually go faster and harder transfers over to my work as well. No matter how difficult a challenge I might face in trying to accomplish a task, I know that I will not give up. Surviving a spinning class provides me a measure of sanity….at least for a day.

In addition, the spinning classes offer 15 minutes of core strengthening and arm exercises after the spins. Core and arms are considered insignificant body parts by many cyclists – including myself – but strengthening the abdomen and back allows one to channel more energy into the legs.

Finally – and this has to do with motivation to exercise – the camaraderie of my fellow spinners draws me to the class week after week. It’s almost like being addicted to a TV series like Breaking Bad, where I have to find out how  the mother whose daughter just left for his first year of college is holding up this week or what happened to the woman whose crew team raced in Italy this summer. Not to mention the exuberant charm of Xabi Zapata, who like the perhaps related Zapatistas of Oaxaca, Mexico, could lead a fitness revolution of his own.

Return of the Spanish Inquisition: Happy Hour Fitness

Xabier Zapata is arguably the zaniest spinning instructor in the world. Equal parts drill sergeant and pantomimist, Xabi, as he’s affectionately called by his enthusiastic devotees, uses exaggerated body gestures to instruct sweaty spinners at his Happy Hour Fitness on Ensenada off Solano Avenue in north Berkeley. The gym is strategically located a block away from La Farine, whose morning buns replenish about half the 500 calories Xabi claims one burns up in his 40 minute workout, which is followed by 15 minutes on the mat.

The language barrier presents itself because Xabi – who came to this country from Spain in 2000 -- speaks a kind of Basquerized English. Given the pumped-up volume of the music, the sound of pumping lungs, and Xabi’s accent, I usually can’t hear whether he’s telling us to increase or decrease the resistance on our wheel. Instead, I watch which way his hand turns the resistance wheel or wait until someone in the class yells out “up” or “down?”

One word I do understand: relax. When between double-time sprints, he tells us to “Relax,” I know from experience that he wants us to go fast but not at thrombosis-inducing speeds of double-time.

Spinning instructors are like DJs on steroids. Xabi spins a savvy selection of old rock standards, from the Clash to Bob Dylan as well as a scary riff on Ravel’s Bolero, which portends 9 minutes of increasingly more difficult resistance while standing up the entire time. During slower parts, he converts us into fitness fanatics by delivering a series of hypnotic daily homilies.

There’s always a different screed against sloth: “You feel happier when your body is strong, when you exercise every day.” Xabi’s gospels are truisms, but the thing about a truism is that most of the time, it’s true.

And like Mother Teresa, he lays on the personal touch. He knows every spinner by name, as well as each person’s physical abilities, injuries, and fitness goals. If your form is out of whack during a session, he’ll shout out, “Thomas, relax your neck,” “Patricia, not so much resistance, you need to spin faster.” And if you’re having mechanical issues, he jumps off his own bike and runs over to fix yours while barking orders at the rest of the spinners.

The crazy part of the class is Xabi’s showmanship, which is borderline gay, or could just a form of Basque humor. Today, on a slower number, he shook his shoulders from side to side as if he were doing a striptease. Once he pulled off his fluorescent orange top to reveal a matted, hairy chest. “This is why I make a big sweat,” he expounded, as if he were teaching a biology class.

When, near the end of an arduous routine, Xabi emits his soccer-field whistle – in decibels equivalent to announcing a 5-alarm fire – my eardrums seem close to exploding. Some day I know this class will make me deaf.

Is there happiness in Xabi’s spinning sessions? During the class, it’s more like self-imposed immolation, a Spanish Inquisition of the Fittest, but afterwards, there’s a 24-hour surge of happiness, which slowly dissipates until the next class. That's why I think of Xabi's studio as Happy after-an-Hour Fitness. 

A Euphoric Week in the East Bay

The holiday season is upon us, and for an extrovert like myself, it’s the season when Berkeley seems most bountiful. My East Bay epicenter is Berkeley but this week included a field trip to downtown Oakland’s Preservation Village, a mock-up of what Oakland might have looked like when Gertrude Stein was gestating her syntax at the turn of the 20^th century.

The Potemkin Oakland, initiated by then Mayor Jerry Brown, whose wish to draw 10,000 settlers to the city is now being fulfilled because of high rents in San Francisco, Preservation Village's Nile Hall was host to the launch of Oaktown Tech, a local Google map of tech players in Oakland, which includes companies, bloggers, open spaces, and whatevers. Mr. Lotus 1-2-3 Mitch Kapor, who runs the Kapor Center for Social Impact in Oakland, funded the venture. Susan Mernit, editor in chief of Oakland Local, an award-winning hyperlocal news site that trains and employs local journos, created an “ecosystem map” and database that might have blown Mercator’s literal-location-based mind.

I brought a bevy of clients (in high tech) to the tech-revival potpourri, including the formerly (and soon to be) famous Seymour Rubinstein, founder of MicroPro International, which developed the first commercially successful word processor, WordStar, and launched the PC revolution -- before WordStar, why would anyone want a personal computer? The Oakland technorati at this event included the politerati from Van Jones’s Rebuild the Dream and various nonprofits that bring computing to those who can't afford an Internet connection from the likes of ATT and Comcast, which monopolize the market.

Speaking of monopolies, I met a delightful author, Charlie Haas, earlier this week at a fundraiser for Arlene Blum's (my former Reed College housemate) Green Science Policy Institute, which has led the fight to eliminate toxic flame retardants in household products, such as couches. Jamie Redford’s movie, Toxic Hot Seat, about the fight to eliminate these toxins is debuting this Monday (Nov. 25) on HBO, but since I lack HBO – a monopoly on tasteful TV – I’ll wait to see it on the more democratic distributor of culture, Netflix. So I mentioned to Charlie that I bicycle, and so does he, and he recommended a mobile app called sworkit for doing a great, quick workout. He looked fit, so I checked it out and am still pleasantly aching from some of the moves.

Haas – an Oakland screenwriter and prolific, freelance magazine writer – has written the most hilarious, anti-establishment novel I’ve read since Catcher in the Rye called The Enthusiast, published in 2009 by HarperCollins. It follows the travels and travails of a college dropout who becomes an editor for a bevy of enthusiast magazines, from real ones like ultra running and spelunking to invented mix-and-match sports like kite buggying and mountain boarding. As each magazine folds or gets swallowed by Clean Page, a magazine magnate, we witness the current media disarray mirrored in the hobbyist magazine market. Haas’s attention to detail and sense of the absurdity of modern life – the name of an extreme- sports promotion company the protagonist’s girlfriend works for is called Hindenburg – makes this a rollicking read. I can’t wait for his next book, which he’s writing now.

“The real issue is politics,” said Robert Reich, a UC Berkeley professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, in a discussion Nov. 21 with Dan Kammen, another UC professor -- of energy (didn’t know these existed!) -- who won a Nobel prize along with the rest of Al Gore’s organization studying climate change. Reich was talking about how climate change affects the poor more than the rich in a talk sponsored by CITRIS, a UC Berkeley institute focusing on science, IT, and social policy.

“Environmental degradation and inequality are responsible for much of the upheaval if not the warfare in this century,” Reich added. To resolve the crisis, which he says is immediate, “We need a new industrial revolution…and the scientific community needs to make this a frontline issue.” He urged the students in the audience to organize, mobilize, and energize. Like Charlie Haas, Reich pokes fun at the hypocrisy between our beliefs and our actions but leverages the laughs he gets to motivate his listeners to change the world. He’s a classroom comedian and one of the most loved teachers at Cal.

Finally, although I have had enough of cycling and drugs, I saw The Armstrong Lie, a documentary by Alex Gibney that was just released and only played one week in Berkeley theaters. The euphoria of bicycle racing is like the allegro con vivace in the last movement of a Beethoven symphony: it brings a rush like no other. Or maybe a rush similar to one induced by drugs. When people  don’t want to make a judgment, they say, “It’s complicated.” That’s the feeling this movie left me with. Basically, everyone is to blame: the coaches, the sponsors, the policing agencies, the media, the teammates, and Lance.

I stayed to watch the credits and saw my friend’s name: Amy Smolens, fellow Albany Strollers & Rollers advocate and professional sports video producer, who was listed as associate producer.

“What did you do?” I asked Amy in an email after seeing the film Thursday night in a theater with all of two other people, who looked as if they had dropped in to kill time. She was elated to hear her name was on the screen. She’d driven the camera car when Lance’s team was training in Santa Rosa in 2009, and she said it was the scariest experience of her life. A fearless camera person herself, she had to weave between cyclists, oncoming cars, and make sure her camera person wasn’t going to fall over a cliff while she was shooting and leaning out of the car. She wrote up the experience in  http://pedalmag.com/cody-campbell-interview-astana-camp-photos/

People Who Cheat and Win

I just finished "The Secret Race" by former pro cyclist Tyler Hamilton and writer Daniel Coyle revealing the dirty tricks, including doping and payoffs to the international testing agency, Lance Armstrong deployed to win multiple Tour de Frances and other races. Like Tony Soprano, Armstrong apparently bullied his way into being on top by virtually killing the competition. If anyone got in his way -- as did Hamilton -- he cut off access to drugs. Or with other Tour de France contenders, he would snitch on their doping (they all used the same doctor-dealer) to the testing authorities.

Armstrong's the Jesse James of bike racing. Eventually, he'll get shot down but in the meantime he's managed to evade the law and cycling agencies by playing the good guy against cancer. He's also paid off sponsors, which is why none of them have dropped him, and why most of his former teammates, who participated in the doping, are still afraid to go public although they have been deposed by the testing agencies and the FBI.

You've got to admire a guy who is not only a great athlete but also a successful bully and sociopathic liar. I wonder how his PR armada will deflect the veracity of this heavily documented book. One can only hope that like the other criminal-escapist and superathlete, OJ Simpson, Armstrong's temper will once again get the better of him and land him in the can.

Sure, Go Take Away His Medals

Because I'm on the board on the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and used to race for the Berkeley Bicycle Club (and still wear the jersey, holes and rips), friends are asking me how I feel about the decision to strip Lance Armstrong of his Tour de France and World Champion titles. I feel the same way that I did when Bill Clinton was hounded about his "I didn't have sex" affair with Monica Lewinsky. They both did what they said they didn't do -- drugs and sex, respectively -- and then to make it worse, they lied by denying what they did. 

When you're that high up, you don't want to fall. It's a natural instinct to cover up the truth, especially when you know everyone else in your position is doing or has done the same thing: past U.S. presidents have not been saints, and even the great cyclist Eddy Mercx used drugs like amphetamines to rocket up hills in previous Tours de France.

Sure, two wrongs don't make a right, but many wrongs might mean something's wrong with the system that makes certain actions wrong.

Everyone I know in the cycling community likes Lance Armstrong. He's tough and he's a great athlete. He's promoted cycling as both a sport and a form of recreation, and singlehandedly, he's boosted cycling into becoming a mainstream sport. He's also been loyal to his teammates and courtly to his opponents. I'll never forget the time he let Marco Pantani, who was struggling to catch up with him, and finally did, take first place at the end of a climbing stage at the Tour. And we know Pantani was on drugs, because that's what eventually killed him.

That's the irony: most of the cyclists in the Tour are on drugs. In fact, drugs are de rigeur for top-level professional cyclists. When I was racing, my coach, a former world cycling champion, said while she was on an Italian team, every day the team doctor would hand out "vitamins," and every rider had to take them in front of the doctor. One didn't ask what was in the "vitamin," although it clearly helped with one's performance. 

On the other hand, I've only known one cyclist who didn't go pro because of the mandatory drug-taking. If everyone else is doing drugs to stay competitive, not taking drugs means you are not going to win.

Americans still like Bill Clinton. In fact, I think they like him better than any other politician alive today because he's ambitious, not just for himself but for a better world. Armstrong is on the same track. They can take away his medals but not his mettle. The world is a better place for him.