Well, not yet.
Tomorrow starts official training, courtesy of the LA Fitness next to work. From here out I will be doing about 80% bike work (spinning and cardio bikes) and only about 20% of the “fun stuff” (swimming and so forth).
The last spinning class I took was two months ago. It featured a man who looked like a wiry Mr. Clean, sans-earring, and some truly impressive bike shorts. It also featured 3 or 4 gym rats, a couple of yoga moms, an elderly man who looked frail but, as he did not apparently sweat at all through the class, wasn’t, and myself.
Mr. Clean started the class with some vintage Madonna and I realized that he arrived in class in bike shoes and gear not having changed into them recently — he had in fact biked in from Seattle where he worked, to TEACH SPIN CLASS.
Ever been to a spin class? Here it is in a nutshell:
The instructor gets up on a bike in front of the class, facing you. Everyone else is facing the same way, at him/her. (For the sake of this post, we’ll use the neuter pronoun of him). The music starts, and he tells you what to do: how fast to spin, where to put your gears, whether or not you should be sitting or standing.
It’s that last part that is the core of the masochism that is spin class. I can handle shifting and making things harder to do, I can handle spinning faster or slower as permitted. But when they literally have you standing up and riding for 5 seconds, sitting down and riding for 5 seconds, and repeating — for two to five minutes — your knees, hamstrings, and quads inform you that they are not happy with you, right then. They do not wait until the next day to make their displeasure known.
This is likely because your back, chest, and arms (including forearms, biceps and triceps) are all queueing up to do that the next day. The day after spin class, you feel as though you have done something truly ill-advised to yourself.
I can’t wait.
For those of you who go to the LA Fitness in Bellevue, WA: I will be in the 5:30p Spin Class on Mondays and Wednesdays, and, schedule allowing, Fridays. You’re welcome to come and see me disintegrate.
Bobbie Conti 