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So anyway, I missed a day of Spinning thanks to the fantastic stomach flu that paraded around in my body for a while. It caused me quite a lot of grief, caused me to vomit at the table of one of the nicest restaurants in Pittsburgh and caused my girlfriend to catch it from me. That’s a lot of cause. The effect is when I did return to the old stiff saddle yesterday, I wasn’t quite as rigorous as the few days before it. Unfortunately for you, that means this post is over.

The only thing more difficult than an out of shape person Spinning is an out of shape, inhumanly inflexible person following Spinning with a heaping dose of ball class. Attempting to keep balance and stretch out on stability balls is something I originally didn’t want to try, but the persistent ladies of the MWF Spin class forced me into it. Thanks to their nagging, I can say I don’t regret it, and will be back next week.

Some things were harder than others, obviously. I should include a picture of this, because it’s hard to explain, as my previous adjective “inhuman” is fairly accurate. When I sit, or position myself on my back, I can hardly stick my leg out straight because of my super tight hamstrings. Attempting to lift my leg in the air to any degree results in a bend at the knee. The further I attempt to raise, the further it bends, until it’s past a 90 degree angle. I’ll have to get some pictures up here for sure, because I need you to really see what I’m talking about. All this inflexibility made the ball class surprisingly challenging, but I can see how it will provide future rewards if I stick with it as an after-Spin routine.

Today was the day of reckoning. Actually, that’s ridiculously overdramatic. It was just a day where I decided to push the limits of what I normally do during class. To date I have been maintaining a heart rate of a modest 125ish during my training. My response to this is that things have been a bit boring. It’s exceptionally easy for a deconditioned person to achieve a heart rate of 125, and I haven’t been able to participate with the rest of the group during the standing climbs, runs, and all that other good stuff that keeps your mental and physical momentum going. With Gene out of town for the past week and a half, I haven’t remembered to ask if it was suitable for me to up my heart rate a bit more and actually do some exercise.

So, I just took the liberty of doing so. Hopefully that’s cool, Gene. If not… tough, I guess. I can’t un-exercise. Well, I suppose I could go get a Double Whopper or something. That’d do it.

Therefore I rode with the team. I stood on the climbs. I kept my cadence where I was told to. I certainly assume my resistance isn’t as high as the other people, but my little rickets are far from handling high levels of resistance. But I did feel better after today’s session than I had after any other. I sweat profusely during class, and while I once said I’d rather be covered in a gallon of warm tobacco chewer’s spit than covered in sweat, it was indicative of my effort. I’m ready to keep going.

I suppose that’s all she wrote at the moment, so stay tuned for tomorrow.

I’ve got some sore calves. And I don’t mean baby cows. They’re on the farm, doing just fine. I’m referring to those fancy little muscles on the back of the leg. You know, the ones that quake and scream with every step after an exhilarating session of riding a stationary one-wheeled bicycle to the tunes of the 1970s. There is actually a variety of reasons why a calf could hurt, but since mine is ailing due to the previously mentioned scenario, we’ll run with it.

It was my intention to take a photograph or two of myself for this blog yesterday. It has been an intention with nearly every post that has been written to date, and has yet to come to fruition. Blogs are more interesting with photos, and I feel at the least I owe you proof that I am indeed a real person. But more importantly, I wanted you to see what we’re working with here. One of the things I’m trying to stress in this chronicle is that I’m working from a very out of shape starting point. I’m also trying to stress that if you looked at me and didn’t know me, you wouldn’t assume that to be true. So, I promise to be caught on candid camera soon. Then, to my own chagrin, you can see the one bit of me that actually does look out of shape: my little popsicle stick legs.

Thin, muscleless legs and a big head… I’m a golf tee.

Back to what I was saying – my calves are wrecked. I can already see a development in my cycling, however. Since I’m so unfit, my instructions are to keep my heart rate very low. This has kept me from participating in all the aspects of the class – such as standing climbs, for instance. I have yet to do one because it would undoubtedly spike me well above my limit. That said, I’m already finding I can do more than I did two weeks ago with my heart rate at the same pace. This is a good sign, as it suggests that conditioning is taking place.

Now I don’t expect the muscle soreness in the calves and elsewhere to stop. Continuous soreness means continuous progress, and I have plenty of progress yet to make. But damn if that seat doesn’t make my butt hurt…