This Ain't No Disco

At times it sounds like one but other than the songs that I can really attach to viscerally I agree it ain’t no disco. What it is though is a virtual ride through the existential side of our minds. It’s no joke when we say that we are not just spinning our wheels when we don those cycling shoes and clip in because the ride is anything but stationary.  For years in the main studio I would alternate between the elliptical and the recumbent bike searching like a cell phone signal for the deep connection I knew that I could never synch myself into because I was alone and unplugged.  It is here that I found the invisible yet (just like electricity) palpable current to make things arc and transform the sub, pre and conscious parts of my brain. 

 When you alter your thoughts your actions and reactions change and change inevitably follows in our physiology. How could it not because what we think about becomes our reality? When EW talks about incinerating fat our mind is hard at work making the chemistry to do just that.  I think most of us would agree that what we focus on expands and if we choose to think about what’s wrong in our lives the power of the mind manifests a deeper “wrong” because our brain wants to give us exactly what we want.  When I am in the CS it’s a rare moment when an outside thought descends into my consciousness. Just to make sure I leave my (what has become an extraterrestrial alien) cellular device in the locker room. I am alone and together with 55 precious beings trying to achieve the same thing a fit body with a mind to match.   

This ain’t no disco or even a dance party but the celebration in our heads makes me think it just might be.  

I Like How It Feels Part II

I like how it feels when I can take off my jeans without unbuckling the belt. 

I like how it feels when Ari and Lizzie say that I look like I'm wearing someone else's clothes. 

I like how it feels when I don't look my age. 

I like how it feels when I am the fittest person at the Thanksgiving table. 

I like how it feels when I walk into the CS and know most of the people.

I like how it feels spinning next to athletes like David, Cindy and Stacy because it makes me feel young. 

I like how it feels when we can use creative visualization to improve our lives in the other 23 hours. 

I like how it feels to be positive. 

I like how it feels to be passionate. 

I like how it feels to be enthusiastic.  

I like how it feels to write about the Renaissance that is taking place in my life right here right now. 

I Like How It Feels

I like how it feels when I put on a pair of jeans that I haven’t been able to fit into for 8 years. 

I like how it feels when I stand in the shower and I can see my toes. 

I like how it feels when I look in the mirror and my shirts look like they’re swimming on me. 

I like how it feels when I get out of the shower and I am not afraid to look at myself naked in the mirror. 

I like how it feels when my friends tell me how good I look and ask me; did you lose weight?

And I like how it feels when I start to stretch in the cool down and know that I gave my body the healthiest start to the day.  

I like how it feels I know I do. 

P.S.

I like how it feels when I can take off my jeans without unbuckling the belt. 

I like how it feels when Ari and Lizzie say that I look like I'm wearing someone else's clothes. 

I like how it feels when I don't look my age. 

I like how it feels when I am the fittest person at the Thanksgiving table. 

I like how it feels when I walk into the CS and know most of the people.

I like how it feels spinning next to athletes like David, Cindy and Stacy because it makes me feel young. 

I like how it feels when we can use creative visualization to improve our lives in  the other 23 hours. 

I like how it feels to be positive. 

I like how it feels to be passionate. 

I like how it feels to be enthusiastic.  

I like how it feels to write about the Renaissance that is taking place in my life right here right now. 

Dance With Me Kristen

From the front row a dance is certainly within the realm of possibility as I can just reach out to our vaunted leader and do an inside turn. However, this is just a metaphor for the real dance we do each morning in KSC.  I worked up quite a sweat  “in my life as a dancer” and now in my life of spin (that is nigh on two years) I work up that same sweat and then some. Never since my days of long distance running have I worked this hard in achieving the level of fitness I now enjoy.  You can see it in the mirror but the feeling inside viscerally is where I feel it the most. It’s a leanness that makes us feel like all our clothes are loose which is gratifying beyond words. We can dance in the Lavender Palace during the day and when we dance in the dark at night it feels as if a pirouette is child’s play. 

And the dance is always different. The Evil Woman may program her discography but never her soliloquies. She could never be content with the same old thing it always has to be cutting edge and whenever she can shed the “old school” thought process she does. The latest is her disposal of the theme of just burning calories. I tried that for almost 7 years in the main studio and I know it just doesn’t work because you wind up (if you’re lucky) maintaining your weight or more likely gaining weight instead. I think that if we use the philosophy of just burning calories it gives us a false sense of what we can ingest. For me I think I thought I could eat anything because I had worked out for the day. But more than likely I ate back my workout and more. With Kristen’s credo of going into the day in caloric deficit our metabolism shifts and our bodies become an inferno as we incinerate the food we eat.  

I have always loved to dance since The Twist* in 1960 and if the circle of people that would surround me back then in 5th grade were any judge I was “doin’it and doin’ it and doin’ it well.   And now in 2011 I can still dance and each morning I am dancing as fast as I can.

*The Twist is the only song to be released twice once in 1960 and then again in 1961 and reach #1 in the Billboard Charts both times.  

Didactic Kristen

Monday KSC is a time to purge all of our eating indiscretions from the weekend. 

Although because of her encouragement I have lessened my intake of sweets and empty calories. Not all the time of course but since I don’t drink alcohol I have a leg up on you “earthlings” that drink socially. I do know that those calories are like candy bars without wrappers and I am also cognizant how smooth booze can be and how those pounds can sneak up on you and tip that scale to the right. 

Merriam says that Didactic means: intended to convey instruction and

information as well as pleasure and entertainment. The Evil Woman does just that doesn’t she? That is one of the secrets to her success. She takes pride in giving us technology that is always cutting edge, even if we have a tendency not to hear her every word. In time however, we listen to her message and all we have to do is look in the mirror to see a reflection that we haven’t seen in sometimes many years. 

And as far as entertainment goes who does it better than she with her double entendres that both titillate and inspire.  She works the room better than anybody because she makes sure she knows all her members and what their strengths are as well as their weaknesses. And who doesn’t love hearing her call out our names every class and when we don’t we know we’ve been sent to Coventry but that never lasts for long because she loves us like we love her.  

Didactic Kristen. Today we learned a new word: “Stripping”. She had plenty of fun with that and why not getting naked is always fun in the right setting but this term had us taking down road instead of adding resistance and it made the ride feel like more like the open road going up on a hill attack and then enjoying the ride down the incline. It gave the ride at least to me a new dimension that I can’t wait to try on Thursday. 

Note to Kristen’s Mom: Just between us did you ever wash her mouth out with soap when she was a little girl? She is terribly naughty albeit in the most intoxicating way.   

Passion in Our Pants

Do we all know just how much drama goes into securing a bike online for KSC? I mean do you really know? I awake at 6:25 to the alarm clock app on my 4G phone that keeps getting louder if I do not heed the dismiss tab. And as I saunter sleepily into my bathroom I know my macbook is fully charged. When I open it I  have the Firefox browser loaded to “Book a Bike” all set up and within a few seconds I am poised with one finger on the “refresh” tab and the other on my touchpad. And at the stroke of 6:30 I am at the ready when Kristen’s class magically appears. I try to relax and because I have gotten so successful in securing a bike when I am in front of that computer some of the nervousness has subsided but there is still that smug satisfaction that I don’t have to consider the Loser Line.  

I love to get bike 3 because it’s nearest the top of the app and every millisecond I save in moving that cursor insures my success ratio. Today I had  #4 (Which is Stacy Sable’s bike) but I was unceremoniously unseated by Louis because my bike was "traveling" on the floor. I had no real issue with the slight dysfunction but the new GM anxious to throw his weight around pushed me back three rows to #23. I was slightly miffed but after all I was here and the Thursday edition was just where I wanted to be.  

The ever-mercurial Kristen was part playful part animal and the combination was lethal. All I needed to do was watch David Cooper just in front of me to know that even a hulk like him was hit by gamma rays rendering him a shelled pistachio.  

Spin Notes. 

The Evil Woman gave some great nutritional advice and today I was determined not to eat any candy and make sure no ingredient that I couldn’t pronounce went into my cakehole.  Harold still longing for a hamburger even at 8:30 in the morning was fit to be tied at such a blasphemous thought.  

Note to Kristen’s mom. She was talking about having “Passion in our Pants” this morning and God only knows what she was referring to. I just thought you ought to know.  

Advanced Kinesiology Part Unknown

There are so many ways that I can describe spin class with Michelle Corso but unless you actually experience her firsthand you probably won’t be able to fully cognate what the hell I am talking about. How many times can I tell you about her kinesiologist’s dream like physiology and you not get sick of hearing me? I will tell you again that it’s simply not to be believed. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.  

Michelle to me is as I have related before is technically gifted and has a vision every time she takes the wheel. There is no ad hoc performance from her as   she is meticulously prepared and damn it she has great rhythm when she starts gesticulating off the bike to drive her point home.  I really don’t think she is as shy as appearances might indicate because with 4 daughters one would need all the social skills that God could provide because the estrogen alone would kill you.  

Michelle is also apart of Cycle for Survival in February and the stars are coming out that day.  February 4 might seem like a long time from now but hell I just put my bathing suit away and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  

A Day In the Life

As I approach the CS there’s not much on my mind except getting to my numbered bike and making the various adjustments but first I have to navigate (and I do have a third mate’s license) past the sea of members milling about the narrow entrance of the Lavender Palace. For the biggest studio on record it sure has the smallest ingress on record. We could use wider doors if there is any mistake the designer made. Of course I’m talking about Kristen’s Spin Class where the hot ticket is still hot and 55 bikes was supposed to be more than enough but alas that studio hasn’t been built yet.  

Thursday night I had the chance to spin with the incomparable Carolyn Mellace. She’s The Blue Sapphire to me and although my time schedule doesn’t seem to dovetail with her limited appearances at EQ but when it does it’s always a treat. She has her own inimitable style like jumps and her patented isolation spin where going slow never was as challenging as it is with her. Last night she played the Doobie Brothers a song that you’re not likely to hear anywhere else but because Carolyn is more impromptu rather than sticking to a script it makes her truly singular in nature. 

Kristen has a great lineup slated for Cycle for Survival in February and it’s the Queen followed by her star-studded staff including Tripp, Damian and the aforementioned Carolyn Mellace. Now I don’t have this from Mount Olympus but it seems like this is the starting rotation. It should top last year’s event and I just hope I can cover it like last year.  

Relentless

What does that word mean to you?  It’s a notch up from persistent I think. Relentless means that one never gives up.  Persistence is something you keep on repeating regardless of the outcome. Relentless is all about the outcome and nothing matters until one is successful or an outcome results even if its failure.  

A great word to focus on in KSC today and this wordsmith is all about relentless. I never give up because I have found that even if things take year’s relentlessness will eventually bring results. Sometimes it’s not necessarily the outcome we were aiming for but a decision will be made one way or the other. Without the character trait of relentless I feel that we have only one outcome and that’s no. It’s like picking up the phone if we don’t the decision has been made however when we do pick it up we may get the outcome we were hoping for. 

Can you actually see yourself if you are physically able in this class not giving it your all?  What is it that drives us on and on? Of course our trainer Kristen puts us in the position to be the best we can be but in the end it is we that have to shoe it.  Riding next to motivated riders is a key element as well as their energy combined with ours provides us with the impetus to be relentless.  

Has anyone read Liz Davies entry? Kristen suggested she come here and ride with us and I have extended that invitation to her.  She apparently is an avid reader of exercise blogs and somehow stumbled on KSC. I am glad she did and if she is willing I have also asked her to contribute here so we can get her perspective.  Might be a little less fanciful than my approach but nonetheless it might give us a lens we haven’t spied through.    

P.S.

My friend Mike a retired anesthesiologist was in the right place at the right time for me today and I just wanted to acknowledge him even though he won’t see these words.

 I have struggled with this atrial fibrillation for quite some time now and today was the first time that I had the symptoms of light headedness and mild dizziness that accompanied it and did not have the accelerated HR I almost became accustomed to.  When I awoke I was feeling that unmistakable HR and took my meds which I am still derelict in doing most days and proceeded to head for spin class. Thinking it would simply dissipate as it usually does with the combination beta-blocker and arrhythmia drug I climbed aboard for what was in hindsight a dumb thing to do. 

In any case after class  as I sauntered around the locker room and wandered aimlessly Mike grabbed my wrist  and told me that even though my HR was low that it was indeed irregular and that I should get my butt to the emergency room and get a monitor on. As it turned out my return  call to my cardiologist came in  and I went to my doctor’s office instead. I am now wired for 24 hours  and the admonitions from everyone are ringing in my ears and maybe this time I have actually heard what they are saying.