Spinning Wildly

Traci (the Mrs. HTF) is an avid exercisist (a word I just made up meaning that she exercises mucho). Every morning at 5 she's up and out the door. She comes back a while later either smelling like chlorine or covered in sweat (I'm told that for women it's called "perspiration") I respect her a ton, while I'm sleeping of course. She most often talks about her "spinning" class. I assumed that this was some sort of aerobic dance class where you spin around to music. I've tried spinning around to music, and I could only go for a minute or so until I could no longer stand, so I can see how you'd need a class to get really good at. To my shock, Traci corrected me and told me that it was a class where you ride a specialized stationary bike to music. She has specialized shoes and everything. It's special.

Well, for months she's been telling me that I need to go with her. Conveniently we have 4 children and getting a babysitter at 5 AM is kinda goofy, so I always have had an excuse. Well, my mother-in-law is in town for the holidays, and Traci said all she wanted for Christmas was for me to go to the "Spinning" class with her. I couldn't say no. So this morning we went. It seemed benign enough when we walked in. There were a bunch of cool-looking bikes that don't actually go anywhere, but I quickly noticed a huge design flaw in all of them. The seats were tiny and harder than the wooden chair I'm sitting on now. I asked Traci about this, but she just thought I was being funny. I wasn't. She got me all set up and the class got started. After the first 8 seconds or so I was hurting in places where I've never felt pain before. That tiny seat was literally "kicking my butt" in ways it's never been kicked before. I figured I'd last longer if I never sat down. Yeah, so that strategy didn't work well either. I toughed it out and I'm sure there were plenty of chuckles directed towards me during those 45 minutes of torture since my form was a little bit shy of perfect. About 30 minutes in I started actually feeling ok, but that's probably my body going numb. Well, I can't really walk up or down stairs now, so I'm thinking that this spinning stuff may not be for me. And this wooden chair is making me squirm.

There's one problem . . . Traci wants me to go again on Wednesday.

Here are some links to a few of my blogs about other exercising adventures:

On Two Years Rest . . .

The Only Guy

That's Great, But Please Don't Crowd