The bikes in our spin studio are connected. Every ride goes to the cloud with the rider's cadence, power and heart rate, so the members can see their numbers. At four every morning all twenty bikes upload a forty five minute class. Twenty riders. Twenty heart rates. The studio was locked, dark, and the instructor's bike had a class on it that nobody taught.
I am the fitness manager at a leisure centre, and the spin studio is the room I am proudest of.
How the bikes work.
Twenty bikes, one instructor's bike on a plinth, each one connected. When somebody rides, the bike logs cadence, resistance, power, and if they wear a strap, heart rate, and at the end of the class it uploads the whole ride to the cloud against the bike's number, and if the rider logged in, against their name.
A bike that is not ridden uploads nothing. There is nothing to upload.
At four every morning the studio uploads a class.
All twenty bikes. Forty five minutes. The rides start within a few seconds of each other and end within a few seconds of each other, the way they do when an instructor says go and says stop. The power curves have the shape of a class: a warm up, hills, sprints, a cool down. Twenty different riders, by their numbers. Some strong, some not. Some who fade on the third hill.
Twenty heart rates. Not from straps, because there are no straps on the bikes at night. The bikes have grip sensors in the handlebars for people without straps, and the grip sensors read a pulse, and the pulses are there, twenty of them, rising on the hills and falling on the recovery.
The instructor's bike uploads too, on the plinth, with a pattern that leads the others by a second or two. Whatever is teaching the class is riding it.
What has been checked.
The bikes, with the company. They came out, took one away, put it on a bench, found nothing. The bike they took away uploaded a ride at four the next morning from their bench, and they have not called back.
The studio. Locked. Dark. The camera in the studio, which is on for safety, shows twenty bikes and a plinth in a dark room with the emergency lights on, and nothing else.
The pedals. I went in at four. The room is dark and the bikes are not moving. The pedals are still. The flywheels are still. The displays on the handlebars are lit, all twenty, showing a class in progress: cadence ninety, power two hundred and ten, heart rate a hundred and fifty, and the bike I was standing next to had a pulse on the grips, which I could see on the display, and I put my hands on the grips, and the display showed two pulses, mine and the other one, and the other one was faster.
The riders.
The rides go up against the bike numbers, not against names, because nobody logs in. Except that in the last month, four of the twenty have started going up against names.
Members. Current ones. People who ride in the day. Their four in the morning rides appear in their accounts, in the app, with their numbers, and two of them have come to reception to ask why they have a ride at four in the morning that they did not do, and one of them has said that the numbers were better than hers.
She is right. They are. On all four. The four in the morning rides are the ride they would do if they were fitter.
What is done about it.
I have asked the company to stop the uploads. The company cannot find them to stop them. I have turned the bikes off at the wall. They upload.
What I do.
I manage the fitness side.
The four named riders are all people who ride the same day class, Tuesday and Thursday at six, and the instructor who teaches that class asked me last week whether we had put a new instructor on at night, because two of her regulars had told her the night class was harder, and they wanted to know who took it, and whether they could book on, and I said there was no night class, and she asked me why her Tuesday six was down to twelve, then, from twenty, and I did not have an answer, and the twenty rides at four in the morning are still twenty, and more of them have names now.