All I need is two (really just one) good wheels

Well. First of all, my feelings about the Aggie basketball team beating the Kentucky Wildcats in overtime on Saturday night are best summed up in the actions of Super Bowl MVP, Von Miller.

And Caroline’s soccer team finished the weekend with a 2-0 win and a 0-0 tie, so it was good weekend for all the sports at our house.

But here’s what I really want to talk about.

Spin class.

Let me take you all the way back to last August. We were on our way home from the beach and I told P that I really needed to work out more and that I might be interested in trying a spin class. I even texted my friend, Laura, and said, “Hey, I think I want to go to spin class with you some time.” But then it never happened because my follow through is terrible and, basically, I don’t like exercise. I know it can give you a longer life and produces endorphins and blah, blah, blah, but all those episodes of Parenthood aren’t going to watch themselves and sometimes you have to choose your battles.

And then the fall got really hectic and I vowed that after the holidays were over, I was going to get on some sort of exercise routine. But because I am not a follower, I opted to not start in January with the rest of the world who had made New Year’s resolutions. Plus, I felt like I had to get some momentum going on my next book and my prime writing time happens to be mornings which coincides with the most convenient time to go exercise.

Finally, here’s what I know about myself. I am not going to work out twelve months a year. Judge me if you want but I’m just being honest about who I know myself to be and, after almost forty-five years of living, I am fairly self-aware. So I hate to waste my exercise energy on months like January and February when we can wear big sweaters and puffy coats and layers upon layers of clothing. January and February are prime Netflix months.

But apparently Mother Nature didn’t get that memo this year because this has been the warmest February I can ever remember. And last week it actually got hot enough in the afternoon that I put on a pair of shorts and then scared myself when I walked by the mirror because I thought I’d seen a ghost who’d been watching too much Netflix. (And also writing a book. Just in case my beloved editor is reading this.)

It made me realize I was going to have to reset my exercise calendar to accommodate the fact that winter is apparently not happening in South Texas this year. So I texted my friend, Debbi, because I knew she’d recently started going to spin classes at a new place called Cycle Hub that some friends of ours recently opened. Then she invited me to go with her for the next two weeks until I finally ran out of excuses and went through the seven stages of no winter grief and said yes.

Last Thursday evening I went to my first class. And you know that old saying about how you never forget to ride a bike? LIES. ALL LIES. Because even though it’s a stationery bike, I felt a little bit like this.

Debbi had promised me the whole thing was a no pressure deal and you can ride at your own pace, but we had an instructor she’d never had before and at one point he walked to the back of the room where we were (Yes, I was at the back of the room. Hoping to achieve invisibility.) and he got in our face and said, “GO! GO! GO!”. Which made me feel like this.

But I picked up speed and increased my resistance because I am just competitive enough to be a danger to myself and this was essentially the result.

However, when the class was over I looked at my stats and realized I’d ridden almost fifteen miles and burned over 500 calories and, for those of you doing the wine math, that’s two glasses. Plus I had tons of energy and felt super accomplished and basically had levels of excitement that most people reserve for accomplishments way more complicated than riding a stationery bike in an air-conditioned room while music plays and a disco ball lights everything up.

And so I went back again on Sunday afternoon after we got home from soccer and only felt slightly like this.

It helped significantly that the instructor played a combination of disco music and, be still my heart, Hopelessly Devoted by Olivia Newton-John. If you’ve never ridden a bike to a song off the Grease soundtrack, then you really haven’t lived. By the time class was over, this was me.

Well. Until tomorrow morning when the soreness really sets in and this is me.

Which never happens after watching Netflix.