From the moment I stepped out of my car, I felt queasy. There was an Ice Box Restaurant, Green Monkey Yoga, and of course, Flywheel all on the same block- not exactly my scene.
As I walked to the class, I felt all the judgey stares from the Sunday brunchers as they munched away on their twenty dollar salads. "Yes, I'm wearing dorky running sneakers with socks that don't match and yes, I probably should've given this tank top a once-over with a lint roller, but I'm going to work out, so I'm bound to look way worse than this in about forty-five minutes" - that's what I wanted to say, but instead I continued to speed walk with my eyes glued to the pavement.
I opened the door to a swirl of Lululemon cycling pants, high buns, and black mascara. I needed change for the parking meter, so I asked in the general direction of the man and woman standing behind the front desk. They both had a thousand-mile stare, as if they could barely be bothered to move for a peon like me. Without a word the woman handed me the four quarters. I'm sure she was wondering why I hadn't just valeted. I quickly put the change in the meter and ran back inside where I was directed to the Apple laptops on the wall, which is where everyone is supposed to check-in before class. I clicked my name into the welcome screen, all the while thinking how the owners might save some money if they got rid of the two cyborgs at the front desk and just installed a change machine. Lauren and Jenn, my cohorts on this little adventure, pointed out that the cycling shoes were just under the laptops in a little cubby hole. I grabbed them, made my way past a door right out of the Matrix and on to the bike I'd reserved online, number 6, right in front of the instructor. Lauren grabbed a gel seat for me and whispered, "I overheard some girls talking- If we don't use these, we're not going to be able to sit down after." Comforting.
Here's the abridged version of what went down:
Lights turn off. Flat-screens turn on. Pearl Jam starts blasting from a killer sound system. I think, "I can deal with this. I'm going to do this for Eddie." We turn up the "torq". We turn down the "torq". We stand up. We sit down. The instructor asks us to grab weighted bars from the side of our bikes. I do two sets of shoulders and biceps and punk out. I want to leave, but unfortunately for me I don't know how to un-click myself from the bike. I throw my head down on the handle bars and think how lucky I am that the lights are out, so that no one can see me dry heaving. This is followed by twenty more minutes of going fast, then slow, standing up and sitting down. Then finally the class is over and the instructor shows us how to un-click our shoes.
Like many gyms and fitness centers, Flywheel allows you to take the first class free, which is exactly what we did. Besides the fact that I don't really like cycling classes in general, I could never imagine paying twenty-five dollars a class for what is essentially riding a bike in the dark. But Flywheel and the also super trendy Soul Cycle seem to have a cult following. I guess you could get addicted to the adrenaline rush, the feeling of accomplishment once it's over, and the fact that you are burning tons of calories, but you could get the same feelings and results using any number of interval training exercises for FREE. If you like cycling, you could do that same workout on a real bike. You can choose from a number of online interval training exercises, like this one here. It took me all of 5 seconds to find that workout. If anyone tries it, let me know how it goes. I've actually been meaning to test out a running interval workout I found on Nerd Fitness. I downloaded the app Interval Run and added the workout there. The app will interrupt my playlist on Spotify and let me know when I need to speed up and slow down. I'll test it this weekend and post about it on this blog. Until then, if anyone has been independently interval training, I'd love to hear about it.
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