Spinning With Clarissa

All of us have been on our bikes for at least five minutes, often ten. The bike needs setting-up: saddle and handlebar height, seat position and pedal straps. When you've done that, you put your towel over the handlebars and do something else until it's time for the class. Very few people turn up at the last minute: even the warm-up needs a warm-up.
Hello everybody,
Clarissa is almost invisible by the electronics as she calls us to attention.
light gear, fast pace....
The music gets turned up. Loud. The gym has its own DJ. Clarissa doesn't shout over the music, as most of the others do. She's found a way of mixing her voice in, so it sounds like she's part of the music.
Medium gear. On the top. (beat) Warming up. When Clarissa says "on the top" we all rise as one to pedal standing up. During the hour, we follow her body language almost more closely than her words.
Take a seat, light gear.
Resistance is changed with a knob on the frame just behind the handlebars. Our right hands swoop down from the handlebars, turn the knob, and grasp the handlebars again. There are four settings: light, medium, medium-to-heavy and heavy. Light means as little resistance as necessary to stop your legs rotating out of control; medium is enough to take your weight when your standing on the pedals; medium-to-heavy hurts your thighs when you sit down; heavy needs body-weight to move it when you're standing up.
Lots of leg rotation.
I look round and I'm surrounded by energiser bunnies. The women who do the class regularly pump their legs up and down fast. Maybe it's easier if your legs are half the size of mine. And you're half my age.
On the top, medium gear, warming up.
I haven't timed how long we warm up. Once the class starts, you can't look at the clock, or you may lose heart. Warming-up slides into the class proper.
Micro-turn to the right.
To the right is more resistance; to the left is less.
And a little more.
Building up for a climbing section: perhaps ten minutes of solid medium-to-heavy on the top.
A little faster...
Prepare for take off...
Doors to manual,
and cross-check.
Clarissa chuckles at her own improvisation. She even paces the phrases like the pilots do.
Faster than this.
She means: than she is pedalling. I watch and have no idea if I'm going slower or faster.
Your pace is so regular, it's sending me to sleep.
We've been "climbing": medium-to-heavy, on the top, for the last five minutes.
A little more gear for some of you.
Clarissa looks round the class with sharp eyes: who is going too slowly, who may have not turned up the gear. It's like a ticket inspector yelling "Hey": the guilty person turns round.
Rhythm in the ride.
Oh yes. Miss a beat, miss a downstroke, slow down, and you might be lost forever.
Let the music help you.
The DJ is on form tonight. I have no idea what genre this is: I'm guessing it's some kind of house, and it fills up my head and keeps me moving. If anyone had come back to the 1970's with this stuff, we would have wondered what the heck we were hearing. We had no idea music could sound like this. No-one did.
Take a seat. Don't touch the gear.
I don't like this bit. When the resistance is medium and above, it hurts more when I sit down because I have less body-weight to bring to moving the pedals.
If you don't turn it up, you will regret it tomorrow.
Yeah. Right. I laugh out loud and Clarissa gives us a mischievous smile.
No regrets. More gear. 
Three, two, on the top.
Light to medium. No more, no less.
Three, two, take a seat. Double!
No-one can double their rotation speed, but we speed up anyway.
Speed on demand.
Is that something competition cyclists need to be able to do? Suddenly speed up no matter if they are slogging up a hill or pushing along a level section?
Three, two, on the top. Triple!
No, I can't do three times the pace I was, and anyway, I know what's coming...
Now, as fast as you can!
There's a countdown, and since it's less than a minute and my feet are solidly in the pedals, I go all-out. I really am doing twice the rotations of the people around me. For thirty seconds, I know I can.
From start to finish... stay strong.
Hallelujah.