R.P.M - Really Painful Muscles (and other softer parts too!)

So a little update for the faithful 210 in 2010 followers. Today I ventured out into the anticipated snow storm to engage in a  new activity - a spin class, or more appropriately an R.P.M class devised by Les Mills.

Dear Lord, why are these things not illegal? I mean, really, there must be a law against strapping fat people onto bicycles that have only two purposes:

1. to suck the very life force and will to live out of your body through your legs and, 
2. to wedge a very narrow bicycle seat into places where only liberal applications of cooking grease allow for easy extraction.

If you have not participated in such an endeavor let me describe the scene to you. Imagine a dimly lit 30'x40' room with more bicycles per square foot than the streets of Beijing at dinner time. All the bikes are positioned to face forward - into the back or should I say, the backside of the rider 5 inches in front of you. My sincerest apologies to the lady behind me - what a sight she must have had!! Once you have identified your 'ride' (official lingo for your static bicycle which doesn't go anywhere and therefore is not really a ride, but I digress) - adjusted seat, handlebars, pedals and foot-straps and began the process of eternally losing the aforementioned knife like seat, the music begins and the perky group leader begins the process of herding the cats before him to somehow become a collective mass of sweat producing, pedal-pushing maniacs.

The music starts, the beat begins to dictate your pedaling rhythm and the seat reaches your colon on its incredible journey ever northward. The next 45 minutes becomes a blur of sweat, pain, driving music (which up until this point was reserved for the car and much more relaxing), vocal encouragements from the group leader, thoughts of "Does my bum look big in this?" and yet more energy draining, leg pumping exhaustion. There were hills, even though we never altered our gradient and one failed attempt (by me) at standing on the pedals to apparently reach the top of the hill we were climbing even faster than we were getting there. As I stood up and pushed down on my right foot it slipped out of the pedal stirrup and off the pedal. I just pushed my 'ride' to the top of that hill and prepared to freewheel down the other side, but learned there are no free gears and if you stop pedaling then your wheels stop spinning. It was then I realized that I was atop a new fangled big wheel - without the big wheel.

A number of songs later, my shirt had changed in both color and weight as stuff that was formerly inside me now was absorbed by cotton. There was a lump in my throat which I realized was the previously mentioned narrow seat, which had completed its journey through my digestive system and was waiting for a small cough from me to release it to the fresh air once more. By this stage my legs were burning, my heart was considering moving to another state until October and my clothing was carrying pounds of sweat, but I also had a strangely satisfying feeling of being able to walk out of the class having not fallen off the bike (at least not completely), having given everything I could of, but also very proud of my friend who was leading the class for the way he has taken to this new passion and has made such a difference to the regulars in his class. It was easy to see the way that the participants engaged with him that he was inspiring them - and he inspired me too.

So, this was not the last Rapidly Pedaling Maniacs session for me. Just my first - thanks Brad.