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The fitness frenzy was all part of an indoor cycling fundraiser called Spinning Nation 2010. The money raised will benefit Ride 2 Recovery, a nonprofit program that uses cycling to assist in the mental and physical rehabilitation of wounded troops. More than 400 health and fitness clubs in the U.S. signed up for the event supported by www.spinningnation.org, a Web site that focuses on the high-intensity, stationary cycling workout called spinning.
Several local spinners participated in the fundraiser at Beach City Health & Fitness on Hilton Head Island. Four instructors took turns leading 18 people in a two-hour spinning class.
Participants were asked to pay a minimum of $75 to spin during the fundraiser. They could either pay that out of their own pockets or ask friends and family to help them.
Beach City Health and Fitness owner Don Foxe said one spinner raised more than $1,500 for the charity by hosting a dinner party where guests paid for their meals. Others asked for donations by sending out e-mails or posting Facebook messages.
When all the donations were collected, the group had raised $10,350. Gary Hanson of Ride 2 Recovery said the Hilton Head club was in the top 5 percent of clubs nationwide for amount of money raised.
"I was amazed," Foxe said. "What Spinning Nation was asking was that people would just basically pay $75 to do this ... and yet our members averaged over $500 each."
Foxe said joining the cause was a no-brainer since about 20 percent of his club's members are former military members.
"So many of our people that live here are retired, and they are either ex-military or they have ... people that are in the military," Foxe said. "I think that's why it hit such a chord, such a strong connection here, and especially having the Marine and Naval bases so close by."
In fact, one of the spinning instructors leading the event, Bluffton resident David Sulak, was in special tactics for the U.S. Air Force. He said everyone who supports Ride 2 Recovery is helping speed up the recovery and rehabilitation process for wounded veterans.
"This is a weird time where sometimes I wonder if people even realize that we technically are at war," Sulak said. "I like this program a lot because it just gets the word back out that we've got a lot of troops that need assistance."
That assistance comes through the purchase of spinning bikes and outdoor bikes for Veterans Affairs hospitals, Ride 2 Recovery development coordinator Alison Valenziano said. The group buys the bikes and then trains physical therapists at hospitals on how to use spinning to rehabilitate patients. Money raised at fundraisers such as Spinning Nation 2010 will go toward these efforts.
Valenziano said once patients get used to spinning on stationary bikes, they start riding outdoors.
"They're riding 400 miles in a week when a year ago they didn't think they were going to be able to do anything ever again," Valenziano said. "So it turned their lives around completely."
