Gym is 5 minutes ride from home or 15 minutes walk. NO car involved.

My problem right now is Cardio Vascular so it will be a gradual increase in weight- effort and time on the CV machines to improve that.

Spinning can be fun but not for me. You have a bike that cannot be set up perfectly for you and it does not offer the same challenges as a ride will give. You sit there and pedal and you put more resistance on and increase cadence for an hour of doing basically the same thing. I am not competitive so beating the bloke or bird on the bike next to me is of no importance.

Now a 30 mile ride out on the hills taking in about 3,000 ft of real hills- That is a different matter. When I was training for the big ride I used to do-It was down the gym from January to May and two one hour sessions a week of CV and two 30 mile rides in the evenings. Those evening rides were proper training rides and when we did the 30 miles at 12mph we were fit. This was mountain biking by the way so when the weather improved- it was 3 evening rides and one Gym session aswell as the 60 miler at weekends.

But spinning did nothing to improve my cycling. I was Bike fit but cycling does not improve body mobility- add to upper body strength or exercise the parts of the body that cycling does not do. Why do it? Far better to spend the time at the gym building up the things you lack in than just add to the things you are good at.

Current problem is the CV side and for a while then a spinning class will assist on that. But as soon as the weather improves- I will be spending my time out on a bike doing a proper ride and facing proper challenges.