Map reference: Bank of England Sports Club

Carbs and caffeine: smoothy and half a piece of homemade bread with peanut butter

Another chilly day, so another spin class, this time with a different instructor, very slim and curiously self contained. She has a different taste in music to the usual pop beat. It more rave/house – that really is a guess as I am way too old for the club scene. The tracks are quite mesmerising …and long. One of them committed us to seven minutes of climbing. That’s longer than Box Hill (5-6 minutes for me, I think) but rather shorter than the first hill of the Etape, The Madeleine, which is likely to take me more than two hours.

Anyway, the coach tells the class to try to lose ourselves by focusing on the beat; and watching her with her eyes closed, hair swishing around her shoulders and the sunshine strobing off the mirror behind her, I got a weirdly clubby vibe. This was heightened by the fact that she was necking Redbull. It transpires she was out until 2.30am and then up at 5.30am for her first class. Funnily, her fatigue made her a lot smilier than normal. It would have the reverse effect on me.

I watched the stats on my bike a bit today and my watts were over 300 most of the time, touching 480 on one particular sprint. Hopefully that counts as banking my biking base for the day.

Our leader’s ab sessions are renowned for being brilliantly awful. Half the class don’t stay for it. Ouch.

Note to self: don’t forget to dial up sunshine for tomorrow’s ride, it’s time to get out there and remind myself why I am doing all this…