Saddle Sore

Today, I rode a bike up to Sundance.  Visualizationally speaking, of course.  Lauren and I have decided that if we want to work out we've got to sacrifice, and that means going to the gym at 6am.  Yeah, I had forgotten there even WAS a 6am.

Today we decided to try Spinning.  From what I'd read, I imagined yoga on a bike.  Without the poses.  And more aerobic activity.   As our bike wheels gently spun piles of straw around us into thin cords of gold (nope, nix the straw.  The candles I imagined would have been too dangerous with all that straw).  They said the instructor would lead you through visualizations as you pedal your way to thinness and gorgeously attractive sporty-ness (which incidentally, is my number ONE life goal).  Well, you know, I'm paraphrasing.  I should have turned around when I saw the biking cleats (is that what they are called?).

I wasn't exactly expecting it to be so INTENSE.  But it was.  Everyone was SO NICE to us newbies.  That was the upside.  The downside was that after I'd been on the bike for two minutes, my bottom began to be ready for the end of the ride.  We hadn't even started the warm up yet.  Later Audra, the instructor, tells us we're climbing the Sundance road today.  "It's not that long."  In my visualization, my body got off of my bike and began to haul it up the hill.  There is NO WAY I signed up for mountain climbs at SIX in the morning.  Alas.  My pride would not let me walk my visualized bike out of the classroom, and there was a real bike to be pedaled.

Halfway through I tuned Audra out.  As much as I'm sure I would like her once she let me get off of that torture device, I couldn't listen to her urging AND focus on breathing.  "Don't listen, don't kill yourself, just pedal easy so you can walk back to the car.  Instead of crawling."  That would be my OWN voice in my head--not what Audra was saying.  Hers was more like, "C'mon Adriane, you don't need to sit on that saddle, lift your bottom up and down and up and down and OH, it's time to go STEEPER!!!  Up the resistance everyone!!" 

Well, we got through it.  And it turns out I was doing the "jumps" (the up downs) wrong--I didn't have enough resistance.  Luckily a nameless  but very kind man took pity on me and told me it would be easier if I made it harder.  AFTER the ride was done...but I wouldn't have been able to hear him with the music going during anyways. 

I've discovered that Spinning is where HARD CORE bikers go when it is raining or snowing and they can't ride their bike up Mount Everest.

We are going back.  We refuse to be cowed by Mount Everest.  I mean the Sundance road.  I mean the stationary biking that is called spinning.  It would be WAY too embarrassing to be the "sisters-that-came-one-time-and-couldn't-hack-it-so-they-never-came-back."  Besides, nameless man told us that if we come for three days a week, two weeks straight, the distinct soreness I am feeling in my bottom bones would be gone.  "I don't know what soreness you're talking about," I said as I wobbled towards the door.

Shyeaaaah.  I'ma go lie down now.