just like riding a bike-the perils of spinning-

Hey all,
This morning I'm having difficulty walking. Don't send "Get Well Cards" just yet. It's self-imposed cripple-dom. I'm also feeling inspired by my teacher (Nancy Beckett-see http://www.writingwithnancy.typepad.com/) who's writing a blog about Bikram Yoga.
I used to be utterly opposed to group indoor exercise, but I've crossed over. I used to think looking in the mirror while you exercised was like child abuse to my inner child, but I'm a convert. Not a diehard Tom Cruise convert, but a quiet, hover-in-a-cave, ashamed convert.
I do health club, but we're not going out for carrot juice and talking about our favorite step-teachers. Don't approach me at a party and ask me which spin class I prefer, or which class makes me skinniest. I'd sooner talk to you about my last good s---, which was less painful and didn't require so much discipline and 80s rock music.
Yet....I am about to talk about it the health club publicly. No worries. This is not my greatest hypocrisy.
And go-
I started a "spinning" class a few weeks ago. It's a couple times a week and my teacher is a fierce, petit, Texan with everything-of-steel. She starts every class by saying, unenthusiastically; "The greatest thing about spin is that you can make it as hard or as easy as you like." That may be a balm in some peoples ears, but for me, it's awakens my competitive nature. I didn't play team sports. I played individual sports. I'm no good at "easy does it." I want to kick your ass from here to Alabama, even if we are sitting on stationary bikes.
Then teacher comes over and checks our bikes.
"You could make it harder," she tells me "by lifting the seat up a notch."
'Ten-four good buddy,' I tell her, in my brain. I lift it two notches. I'm in pain. Oh yeah.
Then we peddle for a while until we're warm, which is instantly cause the room is closed in and packed with previously sweaty people.
The teacher, let's call her "Rhoda", is seated on a bike, on a stage, in the front and center of the class. She's our general. We don't look her in the eye, but we follow her directions like the rule of law.
The music is fiercely energetic music. Crack-music, I call it. It's the musical equivalent to a seizure. We're peddling away like bank robbers on a get-away-bike, and she's drawing us a picture of our escape route. Rhoda creates a little mountain world for us.
Rhoda says, "There's a big hill up ahead. Very steep. There's a flat road ahead, but we're in a hurry. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Fast as you can. Slow down. Position one. Positions two. Position three." Position one is sitting, albeit with your stomach tightened and your shoulder blades touching like wings. Two is standing with hands on outside-side handlebars, totally erect, as modern man is able to be. Three is standing with hands on front handlebars, like riding a horse on your belly.
We all have these little knobs on our bikes that create tension or release tension.
When Rhoda says steep hill, we turn up then tension. The hill never has a down side. It's all uphill or flat roads. Sometimes, we even do push-ups on our bikes, something I've never attempted in real life, flat roads or hills. (Not highly recommended.)
I know we all want to live forever and not be fat the whole time, but I'm still trying to want to understand spinning...why we all show up in a dark, smelly room, sit on sweaty seats where so many tushes have sat before, spaz out on rinky-dink immobile bikes and pretend we're riding on mountains.
It's the bike equivalent of how email killed the letter stamp. Why don't I just move to Colorado and get proper buns of steel?
(More to come)