Spinning is my Friend

By Rebecca Mahoney

I started a new blog this year. I am call­ing it my 52 weeks of WooHoo. I thought it was a great way to focus (or some weeks just look for) the many bless­ings, oppor­tu­ni­ties, and joys in my life. My selec­tion for my first post of the brand New Year was my Spin­ning Class I signed up for at the Y. I wrote:

If you lis­ten closely, you will hear my first of 52 weeks of WOOHOO! Although, it would sound more like this, w—o—o—–h—o—o.….…..

It might have been panted in syl­la­bles, through clenched teeth, face con­torted in pain, but it was there. A brand new year, a brand new Spin Class. First, you need to know I have been an exer­cise queen most of my life, but I have never taken a Spin­ning Class. It just always looked like too much sweat and a lot more effort than I thought this old body was capa­ble of, or wanted to expend.

Well, this exer­cise queen removed her­self from power and took a very long hia­tus from the rig­ors of body main­te­nance in an attempt to work on her emo­tional intel­li­gence and develop some spir­i­tual mus­cles in the last few years. The result, I got my degree, a sort of Cross Fit cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the soul. I passed the tests in learn­ing the mean­ing of seren­ity, accep­tance, for­give­ness and what wis­dom really is. While all that intro­spec­tion, mind­ful­ness, and focus on the spir­i­tual side of life cre­ated char­ac­ter with some brawn, the ves­sel hold­ing all these qual­i­ties has gone soft and turned into the prover­bial piece of crap.

The man­ner in which I found myself tak­ing this class was clearly a sign. My Big Trainer in the sky made all the arrange­ments. I just wanted to take a peek at the new spin­ning room and cycles. That’s all. I went from observer to par­tic­i­pant in a mat­ter of about 20 sec­onds. Every excuse I had for not join­ing in was quickly shot down by the spin­ning dar­lings, all jazzed up and ready for their workout.

Our instruc­tor is an ener­getic lit­tle 20 some­thing dynamo. I was impressed that she went through our bike’s design, resis­tance lev­els, how to read the mon­i­tor track­ing our progress and made sure we under­stood safety issues. She warned us of some changes that could occur in our bod­ies while we are on the bikes — dizzi­ness, nau­sea, vom­it­ing… WHAT!? She then pointed out the trash can that was avail­able, just in case. I asked her if she could move it closer. Then, she went through the moves; sprint­ing, or lean­ing for­ward, rear-ends off the seat and ped­dling like Lance Arm­strong nav­i­gat­ing the Tour de France. And, best of all, STANDING and ped­dling. I tried to recall if legs that wob­bled like a new­born colt was one of the signs that was a pre­cur­sor to vom­it­ing and eye­balled the trash can.

One of the songs in our reper­toire of tunes was a Pussy Cat Dolls num­ber. I envi­sioned my body six months (well, maybe a year) down the road as a Dolls can­di­date, but it was hard to embed that pic­ture in my head as the sweat poured off of my face, leav­ing my hair in drippy ringlets on my cheeks and fore­head. There’s very lit­tle sexy about a bright red face, sweat stained tee shirt, fear filled eyes and gri­maces from the shoot­ing pain in my crouch and rear end. The seat is very, very tiny.…

So, no pain, no gain. I am just wait­ing for the endor­phins to kick in. Oh, and I hear one of the peo­ple in the class lost 5 pounds in a week! That’s encour­ag­ing. Espe­cially after dis­cov­er­ing later in the day, I am unable to walk up or down steps with­out hold­ing on to the handrail with one hand and the top of the lead­ing thigh with the other one. The upside… I can eas­ily get in my ten min­utes of med­i­ta­tion while I’m nav­i­gat­ing the stairs. It’ll take me that long at least to get to the top or the bottom.

Nonetheless,.…..WOOHOO—- 16.4 Miles in 40 min­utes.… right out of the gate!

P.S. Seri­ously, this class is an incred­i­ble work­out and the instruc­tors are phe­nom­e­nal. Con­tact the Galion YMCA for more infor­ma­tion. Go on… you wanna do it, I know you do!

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Jan 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.