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Does this spin bike make my ass look fat?

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Dear woman contemplating taking spin class,

Want to drop a few pounds? Bikini season coming up? Bored of the treadmill? I hear ya. Now, granted I was born with a Y chromosome, so I don’t really understand, and I’ll probably say something later in this post to either a) insult you or b) make myself look like an idiot, but for whatever reason, I feel the need to continue.

To start off, spinning is great for a lot of things: endurance, strength, fights boredom, burns a crap load of calories real fast, has lower joint stress than running, lets you meet kick-ass instructors named Jamie…

But there are a lot of things that spinning does NOT do, especially give you a big fat ass or huge throbbing man quads. Why do you feel the need to worry about spin class giving you a big ass or big vein covered legs like some steroid soaked body builder or Tour de France rider? Please stop asking me if my spinning class will give you quads that belong on the World’s Strongest Man competition. If it did, I’d have to find a new job because I wouldn’t want to stare at a room full of fat asses all night long.

Honestly, unless you are pushing against some REALLY hard resistance for several hours a day, you’ve got nothing to worry about. And if you have some strange fear of actually having muscle tone in your legs and you are on some Olsen twin workout plan, that is a whole separate issue that I can’t even help out with.

Just had to get off my chest.

Dudes dig chicks with strong cycling muscles. Period.

Tags: fat ass, indoor cycling, Spinning | Posted in Cycling, Spinning | No Comments »

Lonely Spring

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

After sweating out out teaching spinning tonight with my core three spinners (is that the right word?), one of them dropped the bomb.

“So, now that it is nicer outside, is the gym going to keep the same class schedule?”

Basically, a nice way of saying, “now that we can actually ride outside, we aren’t going to be showing up to your stupid class every week and letting you yell at us for 45 minutes straight.”

Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but I feel so used! Just because it is starting to get warm outside, you forget about me and all of the ass kicking I put you through all winter and toss me to the side!

Okay, well maybe I wasn’t that beat up by it, and I TOTALLY understand. I’d obviously much rather be riding outside than staring at a blank wall in front of me, but it was a little hit to my ego.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to replace my spinning buddies with my Wheelworks team mates now that we are starting to put together some group rides, one of which is tomorrow morning.

Can I actually wake up at 5:30 and get to the next town over in time to ride before work? We’ll see…

Oh, and it is about 6 weeks to Mooseman!

More updates coming soon.

-Jamie

Update: I ended up being 2 minutes late for the group ride this morning and they headed off without me. Looks like I’m continuing my bad habits from last year.

Note to self, set alarm 2 minutes earlier to 5:28 a.m.

Tags: mooseman, Spinning, spinning instructor, Triathlon | Posted in Cycling, Spinning, Triathlon | No Comments »

Glutton for Zone 1

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

A funny thing happened at spin class on Tuesday…

I came in looking to lead a nice hour long endurance ride. I know, one hour doesn’t seem like a real “endurance ride” by base training for a half IM standards, but it was longer than my usual class and we stayed in zone 1 and 2, so that counts as “endurance” to me (at least for spin class). And partially, I was just being selfish because I need to get a lot more time in zone 1 for the next few weeks of my base training until I start to kick up the volume/intensity a bit.

After doing some form work/drills and a few long easy hill sets and light sprints, we cooled down, stretched and called it a day. Now, I’m not sure if this is just me being neurotic, but no one had that big “man I just got my ass handed to me” smile after class, and I like those smiles. They tend to make me feel like I’m actually not too bad at this spin instructor thing.

Honestly people, what part of “burn fat more efficiently” and “cardiovascular strength” don’t you understand? That is what I told you this ride was for. Be happy. Please?

Oh well, I’m just rambling now about people that probably weren’t even upset with me. But I’m a sucker, so I’ll just have to go back to kicking their ass and handing it to them on a big sweaty platter next week.

Tags: spinning instructor | Posted in Spinning | No Comments »

Double Duty

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I usually only teach one Spinning class a week.

There is a class that finishes just before mine starts, but the instructor that teaches that class asked me to sub in for her since she is sick.

I’m a pushover, and needless to say. I am taking over her class.

Now I’ve got to kick random people’s asses twice, IN A ROW?!

I should know better since I should be busy doing base training, but Oh Well! I’ve got a backpack full of PB&J, GU, Clif Bars, Nuun, my bike shorts and some kick-ass new tunes.

Here is to hoping I don’t keel over half way through the second session!

Tags: Spinning, spinning instructor | Posted in Spinning, Training Log | No Comments »