Cycling with the Spin Dr.

Thursday morning I returned to the Y with the intent of attending the Boot Camp class.  I was worried that I dallied too much and would be late.  (For these classes, I'm trying to show up ~5 minutes early to get a feel for it, make sure I'm all set and perhaps talk to the instructor a bit to get a lay of the land.  Since I'll likely only take most of these classes once, I want to get the full experience.)  Well, I wasn't late for Boot Camp...there wasn't a Boot Camp planned for Thursday.  When I'd gone to bed I was setting my alarm to make it to the CROSS TRAIN class, not Boot Camp.  By the time I realized this and ascertained the room in which the Cross Train class was taking place, I was, indeed, late.  I walked by the room and looked in.  It seemed they were just doing some light warm-up type activities, but I opted not to straggle in late and try to get assimilated into the Borg, er, class.

So, I went and checked the other schedules and discovered that in less than a half-hour there would be a Cycling class!  Not only that, but it was a Cycling class run by The Spin Dr; the exact class and instructor I'd missed out on Tuesday when I opted to get a decent night's sleep!

So, how was class?  It was pretty much what I'd expected. (Note: years ago I took a "spinning" class and didn't much care for it then.)  I understand why The Spin Dr. is very popular.  He has a lot of enthusiasm, obviously loves what he's doing, plus, his varied and eclectic playlist made for an interesting game of "what's next?" as to the music we'd be hearing.  Speaking of which, there was one amusing moments during Gin Blossoms' "Follow You Down" where there's a bit of a harmonica solo.  He whipped out a harmonica and played along.  He did it quite well too.  But, ultimately, it's sitting in a room pedaling, not going anywhere.  It's a great workout and the Dr. did an admirable job of mixing it up, but it still didn't do it for me.

(Side note: the Y has these "Expresso" bikes that have a CGI video of a bunch of different courses you can ride.  There are other "bikers" on the video, going various speeds, you can set a pacer who wears a yellow jersey, and you can even have a "ghost" of your own best ride if you've done the course before.  Moreover, these bikes give a visual sense of what the course is, the other riders help give extra motivation and you can see the hills coming...and coming to a merciful end as well.  Plus, it tracks your heart rate (if you keep your hands on the sensor portions of the handlebars) as well as a bunch of other stats on your performance.  If you don't want to try to remember every little bit from the ride but want to track how your doing when you're not there, you can create a profile to log in and check out all your rides through their website any time.  My general disdain for stationary equipment stops at these bikes, I'm a big fan of them.)

Oh, an amusing thing I got out of the class, well, not so much from the class, but from the playlist.  The good Dr. played Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca."  I don't much care for most pop and that song definitely isn't one I'd chose to listen to.  However, while it was on I realized that there's some great bass playing in there.  There's not nearly enough to make me like the song, but I certainly found that a pleasant surprise.

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Yesterday (Friday) I went back to the Swim Fit class.  I really enjoyed it on Monday and from talking to them, found out that Fridays are when they do a lot of dry land stuff and really mix it up.  Plus, I suspect I'll continue doing this class after this silly quest is over.

I got there a bit early and chatted a bit with Beth, the instructor, letting her know that I was planning to become more of a regular, but that I was in the process of taking all the classes so my attendance would be a bit hit and miss for a bit.  About this time, two regulars arrived, Jeff and Trev so we all talked a bunch about classes we've done and classes we want to take.  I may end up letting them know that I'm writing this blog so they can peruse it for my analysis.  [If I do and any of you guys are reading this, HI!]

We did a bunch of lunges, planking, pushups, stretching and squats (possibly more, it was early) on the pool deck to warm up, then hopped into the pool.  The workout probably had fewer than 1,000 yards.  That does NOT mean we didn't bust our butts.  There was a lot of fun, hard drills like diving to the bottom of the pool for a brick, then treading water with it until our heads disappear.  Also fun was sprinting (swimming) to the shallow end then doing different kinds of jumps (squat jumps and another one whose name I forget).  This post is already getting plenty long and trying to describe, in detail, all the drills we did would take a while so I'll simply say that I continue to really enjoy the class and am looking forward to continuing it.

With that in mind, I gave Beth my email address so she can add me to the class's mailing list.  Now I'll get the workouts in my inbox so while I'm on the quest and the other classes prevent me from going to Swim Fit, I can still do the workouts on my own.  Whee!!