Theme Ride Thursday: An Excuse for the Roller Coaster Ride!

Did you know there was a National Roller Coaster Day? I recently found that out!

August 16 marks National Roller Coaster Day, and what better way to celebrate than by planning a thrilling indoor cycling class inspired by the ups and downs of a roller coaster ride? Imagine the rush of adrenaline, the wind in your hair, and the excitement of conquering every twist and turn! You don’t need an excuse for an awesome profile such as this (indeed, I’ve been doing a roller coaster ride for a long time)—but aligning it with a national day can bring an extra smile to your riders’ faces.

I created my original Roller Coaster Ride back in 2012. It was a compilation of several fun mountain bike rides I frequently rode in the mountains and deserts of Colorado with some long climbs, whoop-de-doos, rolling ups and downs, and sweeping turns. That ride has long been one of the more popular profiles here on ICA.

It wasn’t a “theme ride” per se, just a simulation of an outdoor ride in the limited way that we can actually “simulate” an outdoor ride, mostly via our description, energetic cueing, and fun music choice.

Over the years, I came across several excellent songs with “roller coaster” in the title or lyrics and thought they would be perfect for my profile. I started searching deeper in Spotify and found a treasure trove of songs on this theme. I re-created my original roller coaster ride and switched out some of the songs with new ones from my Roller Coaster bucket playlist. You can find both profiles in this post. I suggest you download both of them as there are a few differences and you may decide to mix and match some of the songs. 

And I did all that before learning that there is a specific day to celebrate roller coasters! Now, I teach this profile at least two, sometimes three times a year. Once in August with the predominantly roller coaster songs, again in the winter with my original playlist, and often once more in spring as my riders are starting to get outside on their bikes. I’ll change a song or two here and there but some songs in this playlist are so perfect for the profile that they will never be replaced! 

If you want even more ideas for roller coaster songs for this theme, check out my bucket playlist below with over 40 great songs that mention roller coasters. (As usual, if you ever come across a song on this theme I’m missing in my bucket playlist, please let me know!)

Here is one of my absolute favorites: “Rollercoaster” by Bleachers. At 162 bpm, it’s a great tempo for a fast, rolling climb.