If you spend your daily commute bored out of your brain while trying not to drool on a stranger’s shoulder, news fresh out of London could get you seriously pumped.
Londoners have enthusiastically welcomed a new proposal to turn certain city buses into a spin-session-on-wheels so time-poor commuters can combine their daily travel with a hard-core training session.
The brainchild of a London gym company, 1Rebel, the new initiative aims to fit out a city bus with all the usual gear required for a standard spin class: static bikes, mirrors, pumping music, flashing lights and enough self-belief and willpower to overcome any pesky peak-hour delay.
Riding under the ambitious motto of “Commute hard’’, the Ride2Rebel initiative aims to pick up commuters along designated inner-city routes and transport them to convenient gym locations for a post-workout shower – while offering all you’d ever need for a soul-destroying en route spin session.
1Rebel co-founder James Balfour told Stylist UK the idea is to help offer convenient solutions for their time-poor gym members: “Time is precious in London. Factoring in time to commute to work and go to the gym is often too difficult for many people. It is an absolute no brainer for us that we can create more efficiency in people’s routines by transforming their commute.’’
And it looks like they’ve stumbled on a hit: so far, more than 24,000 Londoners have signed up for the chance to be the first on board the launch routes.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine a similar initiative taking off in Australia, where according to statistics, we spend an average of 53 minutes a day travelling to and from work (though anyone who has ever been stuck on packed carriage of a slow-moving train in the middle of summer, or caught in a peak hour traffic crawl into the CBD would dispute that figure).
And with 11 million of us commuting to work or full-time study every day, that’s a lot of people who could be shredding their way through the city streets.
