DeAnna Woolston

I love to ride my bike. It is exhilarating and it is great exercise. But I’m picky. I like biking on roads that have a shoulder larger than two inches, without a lot of traffic, and where people don’t purposefully chuck water bottles at my head (i.e. not where I live). However between 20 months a year of rain in the Northwest, roads without shoulders, and water bottle chuckers, I often have to ride inside on a spin bike.

So I spin…inside…on a pretend bike with a big heavy wheel. Do you feel like life is passing you by? Are your kids growing up so fast that those birthdays feel like they come around every other week? Take a spin class at your local gym. It will slow down time so Each. Second. Feels. Like. An. Hour.            Tick.                         Tock.                         Tick.

In one class, you will feel like you have lived at least a month…in Hades. You will have laughed, sweat, cried, sweat and wished life would hurry the hell up so you could die already, followed by more sweat. By the end of your infinitely long spin class, all your sweat, tears and dignity will be a disgusting pool at your feet and a swamp in your pants. Your hair will be pasted to your face, and your shirt will be…well let’s just say you’ll need rubber gloves and a scalpel to peel it off. And your odor! You will smell like a teenager’s sneakers, inside a used clothing store, within a prison, on a summer day in Cambodia. But you will come back to spin again.

Why? Because by the time you are done you will either be dead or feel like Lance Armstrong on performance enhancing drugs (which I guess is redundant). You know those people who feel like they have to wear something that looks like a bra and underwear to every damn class to make sure you know just how fit and hot they are? You will feel like that. Just don’t look in a mirror. You don’t look like that.

So here are some tips to keep you feeling like Lance Armstrong in ladies underwear:

1. Only take classes from teachers who are extroverted and have ADHD. Unless they are teaching yoga for potheads, exercise teachers should show up to class with a pocket full of Adderall. They should not be able to carry on a conversation with any one person for more than 20 seconds before they get distracted by: their own reflection in the mirror, eyebrows, something shiny, or the color white (which isn’t a real color in the first place—just a place holder or fill in the blank or an imposter really).

Have you ever tried taking an intense exercise class with a monotone, introverted, low-key instructor? It is as though a fifty-pound wet blanket of blah has been draped on your shoulders. Your ride through Hades just got a flat tire.

2. Avoid instructors with music you hate. I had a great instructor who loved heavy metal from the 80s AND SHOUTING OVER THE TOP OF THAT NOISE. By the end of the class in addition to swamp ass, I felt like I was hung-over at a frat party with my head lodged under the 40lb flywheel of the spin bike.

3. You cannot bring enough water to class. After the first five minutes one of those little 20 oz numbers will feel like a shot glass. In ten minutes you’ll wish you had a camelback, a swimming pool and an IV drip. Either sit next to the water fountain with a hose hooked up to your mouth, or bring your own gallons.

4. If your gym is like mine and too cheap to provide a towel—bring your own. Just know it’s going to get personal. Somewhere halfway in the class you will feel like you are taking a public sponge bath to avoid slipping off that bike.

5. Don’t smile; act like you are suffering—which won’t be acting, because you will be. For some reason, the instructors eat smiles for lunch (zero calories). If you are smiling they will feed off that shit and make you go faster until you are catapulted over the front of the handlebars or they will have you twist that knob of torture until you need two knee replacements and a new heart valve. If you dare to smile and other sufferers see that business everyone in the class is going to hate you. Watch your back in the locker room. They will cut you.

6. You are never going to like it. There will be days you will have to duct tape yourself in the car just to get yourself to class. You will show that wimpy ass toddler of yours how to really throw a tantrum.

7. You will hate your instructor. They lie. They tell you one more set. Don’t believe them. They can’t count. One means five to them. Remember spin instructors think their underwear is gym attire—they are cute, not smart. Basic time-telling is also difficult for them. “Ten more seconds” really means ten more minutes of agony. You will fantasize about eating their eyeballs for hors d’oeuvres. Don’t worry these thoughts will pass when you are in your Lance Armstrong euphoria phase.

8. Your instructor will tell you to pretend you are riding the beautiful open road. Don’t fall for it! The air is stagnant, the florescent lights are trying to get information out of you, and there is a sea of suffering around you. Likewise they will tell you that you are in a race and passing people. At this stage—with you two breaths away from a 911 call—this bit of motivational speaking is demoralizing. You know in this imaginary race everyone has already packed up, had their celebratory beer and gone home and you are walking your pretend bike up that last hill by yourself wailing like a baby.

Remember: Just try to survive the Cambodian prison and try not to eat anyone’s eyeballs. See you at the gym.