As Always My Thighs Burn For You

"5:45am Tomorrow BE THERE"

I stare at the little yellow post-it stuck to my monitor thinking, "Oh great, D-TOSRV is calling me out." These things always start small but the pressure is continuous. Eventually you'll crack or they'll give up. I don't want them to give up since I'm pretty sure they're right about this. I check my work calendar, this is doable, there's a nice block of time for potential napping in the afternoon.

This whole thing is about 'spin class' at a local rec center. I've been whining about being in the 'doldrums' and whatnot so, why not? I'm merely apprehensive since I've spun before. I ain't no virgin darling, I know what you're asking of me. I pack for the gym that evening but slightly differently so that I have the option of going to spin if the mood is upon me.

As I fall asleep I think about The Doughnut Incident from the previous Friday. I'm coming off the elevators headed to the cafeteria, minding my own business as is my nature when I hear, "Why don't you have a bagel instead?" coming from a hallway to my right.

I stop dead in my tracks, back up and look down the hallway. Two girls have another girl pressed against a wall (I wont name names since only one of the three have a name. I'll temporarily name the waffling one um, waffle.) I immediately discern what's going on here, this is the dark underbelly of exercise in action. Being a man of principle I throw down my philosophical gantlet, "Eat a death doughnut." After all 'Bill' is synonymous with ruinous damnation.

I've never seen waffle before but I can tell she's torn and it is a tough call. You're trying to lose weight but an occasional doughnut is or can be something of a payoff. I have no idea if waffle has payed her dues or not, she's not part of the morning crew but I don't have time for a background check here, there are doughnuts to eat.

Head down, wickedly grinning while staring at me through her wicked eyebrows, one of the camp bagel crew wickedly (I'm glad I'm not naming names here, nervous giggle, wrings hands) says, "You heard what he said, he called it a death doughnut!"

Ruinous Damnation squares off against Wicked Goodness.

The other camp bagel member steps back expecting a brawl.

waffle merely looks bored.

We go back and forth making up facts and statistics when I finally lay it on the line saying, "They lost me when they banned cheeseburgers!"

I stroll off abandoning waffle to her two 'handlers.' I have no idea what the outcome was, but when I woke up this morning I decided to show up for spin. It was a combo of the doughnut incident, doldrums and Bubbles' goofy attitude of "What the heck! I'll try it!"

I show up, pay my eight bucks (thanks bikerBabe for floating me two of them) and start setting up the bike. The spin instructor is named Bill so I shouldn't have any problem with his name when I go all endorphiny and start hallucinating. I size the bike, have Bill check it and start doing lazy spins as a warm up while looking about the class.

It's a full class (eighteen?) and three of the members are my 'handlers,' bikerBabe, J-TOSRV and D-TOSRV. I think all three of them clip in, I use the cages. I'm in the back row on the far left with bikerBabe to my right. The TOSRVs are in front of me, slightly off to the right. J-TOSRV warms up at this incredible cadence, spinning the pedals like egg beaters and I'm checking out the others. I have a dude in front of me, slowCadence who must have had the resistance jacked up so high that he didn't have a prayer 'sprinting.' There was baseball cap girl and a couple of ponytails, one of the ponytails had her ponytail up way high on the back of her head. All in all about 50/50 male to female.

Bill starts blasting music and it is on. He's a 'turn it up' kind of guy, rarely backing off the resistance. It took about 15 minutes for me to get to 80% maxHR but I held that for about thirty five minutes. The heart chart reads like a tempo workout but the class itself had a fair number of sprints. I'm not sure why my heart chart doesn't look more like an interval workout, maybe I did something wrong.

I was able to get into the zone for a large part of the class and would glance around from time to time. Everyone's quiet and locked into their personal circle of hell, I found it interesting that all of the women (well the non bikers anyway, I call them that because of their swaying. It might be a spin thing, don't know, but on the bike it's wasted energy) were rolling to the beat of the music, almost like you were in a dance club. High ponytail woman had her head down so her ponytail stuck straight up, all of her rocking earned her the name dementedBush.

As I worked I made the mental note to spend more time on the elliptical since the motion of standing on the bike and the elliptical are very similar. Standing was tougher than sitting, particularly sprinting. I had difficulty not being jerky on a standing sprint.

Spin classes are cool because they're varied to the whim of the instructor so they're not boring. After we were done Bill put us through a cool down that included some stretching once we got off the bike.

The class costs $8 but you can get a break by purchasing packages ($50 for 10 classes or $5/class or $65 for 20 classes or $3.25/class). I enjoyed it a lot and those prices can't be beat.

Check it out, you know you want to.

Thanks to my 'handlers' who encouraged me. It was a great break from the routine, a great workout (I weighed in at 201 but I'm certain a lot of that was water weight) and yeah, I'll do it again.

While I was on the bike I pondered AMC's The Prisoner. I watched this with my son and we both enjoyed it. It is strange but I think it had a point. The following pic is already iconic for me.

I'll...

be seeing you :-)