You may have seen the “Peloton” thing. It’s nearly two grand for the very basic version and brings the gym “spinning” or cycling experience into your home with streamed daily live classes from a TV studio in New York.
Oh, sorry – forgot to mention – there’s also a £39 per month subscription for the Peloton membership. So, you fork out at least £1,990, then you have to pay a lot more than you’d give a local gym just to have the screen on the front show you the live classes.
Bonkers. If I was you, I’d either get to the gym (where there’s normal people like me looking fat and wobbly, trying to keep fit) or get an exercise bike off eBay, Freecycle or those weird Facebook classified ads. You may remember how I strapped an old laptop to mine and then played some YouTube videos of passing scenery. You can do a similar trick with an old smartphone or tablet. Either way, it’s a helluva lot cheaper than a two grand bike and frickin’ £468 yearly charge to have some guy shout “pedal faster” at you via a stream. You can watch pre-recorded videos for free on YouTube here, here or here.
Go onto Freecycle, eBay or your local classifieds, spend between £0 and £20 for a bike, then grab an old Android phone out the cupboard, strap it to the bike with some cable / tape and watch one of those YouTube videos. It’s certainly a LOT cheaper.
Sorry. I don’t buy into all this. When I first started cycling (in an effort to lose my wobbly bits), I didn’t spend a fortune on the latest ultra-light carbon fibre bike. I got one free from Freecycle, then later I bought one for a couple of hundred quid. It doesn’t matter what the thing looks like – you’re out there – you’re getting fit. That’s all that matters. Fair play to you for doing that.
Anyway, back to Peloton and, for some odd reason they’ve put out an ultra-mad “holiday commercial” (Christmas Ad). It seems to have a strange undercurrent of darkness. In it, a guy buys his seemingly fit and healthy wife / girlfriend a Peloton bike so that she can perhaps lose the 2 grams she needs to. Then, as she positions it in their £4 million house overlooking beautiful scenery, she does some weird vlog thing which she then plays back to her husband a year later, as if to say, “I’m a good wife and I’ve kept in trim for you my master”
My wife watched this and basically stuck her fingers up at the screen.
It’s either complete madness, or weirdly bonkers marketing gold (2 million views and lots of press coverage, perhaps we’ve been fooled?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShKu2icEYw
What’s that all about? It’s as if she’s saying, “I did good Master. I did what you wanted”.
Look at her eyes. Proper weird.
Look. Go. Go and enjoy yourself this Christmas. However, if you want to stay fit and healthy – move around more than you don’t move around and eat well. It doesn’t take a hugely expensive bike in your living room.