BLOBBY'S BLOG

Round & Round

It's a miracle. I made it to (and through) SpinFest II.

Seriously, the 'to' part was nothing short of a miracle. I was taking Tylenol and codeine for my back up until Wednesday. And miracle of miracles, I woke up Thursday with some stiffness, but very little pain. Ditto for Friday.

I had already paid, so I though, WTF, I'm gonna ride. And ride I did - for 2 hours.

This was the venue before start-time. People could ride/pay in 30 minute increments, and I'd say about half of us paid for the entire 120 minutes. Yes, paid. All proceeds went to the Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland.

The bikes were assigned and damn it if I didn't get the last row (I'm #45 there) and I got stuck with a shitty LeMond bike. I prefer the grey Schwinns. They're sturdier, they are better rides and as it turns out, better built.

I'm the guy in the back row, white shirt, black shorts. 2nd from the left. The guy with little hair.

You can kind of catch a glimpse of part of me here, right past the person in deep blue who is blocking my photographic moment (as always, click image to enlarge)

In the 100 or so Spin classes I've been to this last year, I haven't seen any one of the Schwinns break. That is what we use in our gym, but they had to import the LeMond bikes in for the extra folks.

Oddly (or maybe not), I could get my left foot into the clip easily...but I it didn't stay. I can't tell you how many times it became free. And on the right one, I wasn't sure it would ever go in, but when it finally did, there was almost no getting it out - even if you wanted to.

But everyone else on the LeMonds were having a lot more trouble than I was. Pedals fell off. Handle bars would not stay up. The drink holder thingy wouldn't stay on. ....and hydrating yourself during an event like this is critical.

It wasn't a normal spin class, obviously. Five instructors, no cohesiveness to the ride, all of them had different styles and the music was crappy. They tried to appeal to everyone which turned out probably not appealing to most anyone. When they started out with "Flashdance" and moved into Scandal's "The Warrior", I knew we were in for a bad time. It was almost a sigh of relief when they finally played "Single Ladies" from Beyonce.

....I said "almost".

Oh...oh...oh....and in the last half hour, they brought in - get this - a live gospel choir! I shit you not. Can I tell you how many of the riders this might have appealed to, if were going by racial stereotypes? One.

Can I tell you how many of the riders were Jewish, if you went by the sign-up list? I'd say about 85%. So songs about Jebus setting us free didn't really really resonate with most of the crowd.

Besides that, the gym floor, as you can see, is a nice one. Having women in 4-6" spiked heels walk and dance on it - not the bestest of ideas. Having one woman with a mic and 16 others (estimated) with none, care to guess how many people you could ever hear sing? It's a gym! There are no acoustics for something like this. That part of the event was flawed at every turn.

So two hours of spin went ok. So far, no repercussions ala my back, so I'm taking it as a win. Maybe I can get back on the exercise wagon - slowly and more carefully. I mean, I've gained 1.5lbs in the last two weeks!

Update: I pre-wrote this, as I knew I was catching a plane to TN. Spinning might not be the cause of my back, but right now it aggravated it. It took 30 hrs or so to kick in, but kick in it did. Sore sore sore. I have packed the T3s to take while I work. Yeeehaw.

Song by: New Order