Peddle Power

I exercise a lot. I am a member of my council leisure services. I get it half price because I work for them. I think it is good for me to support the council services, presumably the more people who support it, the cheaper it is and the more options there will be for people.

I go to the gym and i go to various classes - step, aerobics, bums tums & thighs, spinning.

Where is this going? What is the environmental link? Both good questions.

I also go running. I am not so good at running. I do like it for more than one reason though, even if i don't particularly actually like running itself! I like that it is free (although under my current leisure subscription it actually doesn't cost me any extra to do any additional activities in their facilities, i pay monthly) and it also is zero impact, ecological impact (unless you are running across wildflower fields, or panda mating grounds or something).

This leads me to feel bad when I run on the gym in the treadmill. They use so much power, and I am in a room with heating/air conditioning (sometimes both! Stupid council facilities), lights, fans, music, TVs etc. Plus the new gen treadmills have built in TVs with little, well reasonably sized actually, monitors in. I don't even WANT the monitor, I want just to see my times and things, but that has to be displayed through a screen that probably uses as much power as 10 light bulbs or somehting. At least though i am actually using the info displayed on the screen, I am trying to improve my times, checking my pace etc. Then I see people who are in the gym WALKING on the treadmill. OHMYGOSH what a waste of electricity. But who am I to judge? Everyone has their reasons, and I am only found on the zero-ecological-impact route once or maybe twice a week, compared with the electricity overload of the gym/classes which I attend at least three times a week.

My classes aren't as bad as the gym. Just the heating/air conditioning death match of doom, plus one CD player and amp, and one microphone headset. But that is split between 10-15 people. I think for the variety of exercise and the motivational benefit I can let that one go.

Now, just the other day I saw the music player you power with human running power and it got me thinking...

In spinning (cycling exercise class which simulates hills, corners and stuff) i think they should capitalise on this idea, and wire the bikes up to the lights (they have disco lights in spinning) and music. Not only would this be great as it would be enviro-friendly electricity, but it would also be a great motivator to exercise... if it all went dark and the music was slowing down, we would all have to peddle harder. Green electricity and a better work out, what more could you ask for?