In A Spin

"You're doing a spin class?" asked Wendy after reading yesterday's blog. You could almost feel her blinking through the text.
"Erm...enjoy!" she added.

Wendy, I should explain, is one of the two fittest people I know. She's ex-Army, runs for fun, and recently showed me a 'guaranteed' sit-up to aid weightloss. She lay on the floor and basically folded herself up like a lever arch file in the middle. While she did this, smoothly and without apparent effort, she kept up a witty banter about wedding dresses.
Some weeks later, she asked me, in all apparent seriousness, how the sit-ups were going. I laughed, by email.
"Honestly honey, if I tried to do even a single one of those demented things, I'd just die. Plain, simple...die. Apart from anything else, I simply don't have the co-ordination..."

(This is sadly true - I've brough aquacise classes almost to a standstill by the sheer mental effort it takes me to change from left arm out, left foot behind to right arm out, right leg behind. To do it twice, I need vast amounts of love and encouragement, not to mention a cup of tea and a nice lie down. And yes, every woman in the class was probably thinking "Wow, if he's this unco-ordinated during exercise...")

So getting the "rather you than me" vibe from Wend was fairly daunting. To be sure, I checked with the other contender for the title "fittest person I know" - my pal Sian. Sian, for reasons largely to do with a perverse sense of what constitutes 'fun', runs marathons. And ultra-marathons. And, for all I know, super-duper triple-distilled, 100-year-old sipping marathons.

"Wow...really?" said Sian by text. "I'd rather run 50 miles than do one spin class..."

So - no pressure there then.

I rocked up to the leisure centre for 7 this morning, and walked into an almost empty sports hall. Down the far end was a smallish semi-circle of people on the most anorexic exercise bikes I've ever seen. I got one. Much to my dismay, everyone was already pedalling, before the instructress had instructed them. Smacked of over-eagerness to me, but I kept an open mind and started pedalling.
After a couple of minutes, I was getting cocky, thinking "Well, if this is spin, this is fiiiine. Dunno what everyone was worried about.

This wasn't spin.

Spin began with the introduction of another chacter in the Pantheon of Exercise Hell - Ruth.
"Right, you lot. I don't want a dry patch left on anyone!" she shouted, playing the Drill Sergeant. She started some music on her iPod, and we all began pedalling, while the seats of the razorbikes began their daily duty of cutting us all in half.
Then something insane happened.
Ruth gave a cry, and the rest of the maniacs stood up...and kept pedalling!
"Are you freakin' kidding me?" I said, unheard underneath the music and the fury of pedalling. There was nothing to do but stand and pedal.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!" I said about thirty seconds later, as some muscles I didn't know I had exploded into twanging, shredding, painful life.
"Annnnnnd....SPRINT!" yelled Ruth.
"WHHHHHHAAAAATTTT????!" I practically begged. I looked around. People were sitting back down for the sprinting bits. I thanked a god I don't believe in, sat my ass back on the razorblade and pedalled.
"And UP!" she yelled.
"OH FUCK!" I yelled right back, and got up...

This was Song 1!
And on it went. Song after song. I was in a filth-sweat by the end of song 1. By the end of song 3, I couldn't really see, the sweat was coming so fast. At some point in Song 3, we went from sprinting to standing, my knees were caught unawares, buckled slightly, found my ankles coming up at them too fast, and the razorbike actually threw me! My feet cmae out of the pedals, I spent a panicky second in the air, and then one of my flab-rolls was being forced down onto the handlebars, by the rest of me and the power of gravity.

Ever seen a cheese-grater in action? It was a bit like that, only with me playing the part of Cheddar.I fell off the bike and landed in a moderately sprawled, sweat-slippery heap, with one leg jutting up in a kind of Nazi salute.
"Back on the bike, Tony!" yelled Ruth. "Your trainers are too thick for this, get thinner ones for next time! Unless you wanna go and have a little sit-down!"
"Bitch", I muttered, clambering back on the evil seat, strapping in, and pedalling, just to show her.

After song 4, she made us stop for a drink. I downled almost a litre of water, and wiped the sweat out of my eyes.
"Nearly done!" she told us. "Just two more songs to go..."
"Kill me," I muttered. "Kill me now..." But by the time she said that, I knew I was going to finish the lesson. No pausing, no sitting out, no running out screaming for mercy in a cruel, cruel world. And, about ten minutes of unmitigated agony later, that's what I did. I finished.

And I'm gonna go back. Yes, it's evil. Yes it hurts like a sonofabitch. Yes, my ass stopped talking to me this morning and is still thoroughly pissed. And yes, living on the first floor absolutely sucks after a spin class, as though the last few steps you have to take will be the last few steps you ever take.
But it makes a certain amount of sado-masochistic sense. You work, you sweat, you curse the cruel world and you pedal your ass clean off. It's the kind of thing that both works, and feels like it works, and hurts just enough to make you feel all sorts of righteaous about what you've done.

So this is me - Spinderella of the Valleys. Going to Cardiff tomorrow to get some thinner trainers, cos there's pain and there's pain, and falling off the damn bike at speed is a pain in far more than the ass.

Also, meeting up tomorrow with a pal of mine from school days, who's now living in New Zealand. Philip pops up every handful of years, comes in, is Philip, usually leaves a trail of devastation in his wake, and bogs off back down to New Zealand. So that'll be fun - finding out how the 40-year-old Phil ticks.

But for now, there are fans to put together, cos in case anyone missed this...it's damned hot this week!