Spinning to Lakmé?

I work out regularly at my local YMCA. The route from the locker room to the conditioning area leads right past a large, semi-open studio where the spinning classes take place. For anybody who's ever seen or taken a spinning class, it's a pretty standard sight: loud music, thirty people huffing-and-puffing on stationary bikes, and a couch screaming instructions like a drill-instructor.

I usually pay little attention to it. I'll only ever make a note of it if the music playing is anything special. But the play-list is always pretty standard. High-energy euro-pop and dance music. Despite being seven or eight years old now, Darude's Sandstorm seems to still get a crap-load of play.

This morning, however, I had to stop and do the hearing-equivalent of a double-take. I had finished up in the conditioning room and while walking back to the locker room, found myself bathed in the sounds of The Flower Duet from the French opera Lakmé. If that means nothing to you, you might know it better as the Yanni song, Aria. I know Yanni-fans are not exactly my target demographic, but you've all heard it -- the song was a ubiquitous part of those award-winning British Airways commercials in the late-80s and early-90s. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it was the Yanni version playing this morning.

While my brain was trying to process the concept of spinning to opera, it was also searching for anything that might explain The Flower Duet blasting out of that studio sound-system. I wasn't willing to dismiss the idea of working out to opera entirely. I've never done it, but I suppose one could get pretty pumped up to some Wagner. Maybe I'll run to Ride of Valkyries one of these days and see how it goes. But The Flower Duet?!? It's a wonderful piece of music, but it's almost soporific in its intensity.

Now, I've never taken a spinning class, but I understand that the workout involves varying speeds -- interval training on a stationary-bike. Maybe they were in a low-intensity, rest interval.

I looked in.

What I saw was thirty riders pumping their legs at what looked like full speed, with the coach / drill-instructor screaming, "Faster, faster!"

It was entirely surreal.