Since the CFO is out of town visiting family, I decided to
go to the gym’s “intro to spinning” class on Saturday morning at 9:45. I’ve always read about spinning being a good
winter workout for cyclists and the classes are included with our membership,
so why not try it out? After the instructor spent 15 minutes
verifying that everyone’s bikes were adjusted properly for their size/shape,
the she ran through the basic “moves” involved in a typical spin
class. Basically you vary the resistance
on the machine to simulate hills/flats and then either sit or stand or (harder yet) “jump” back
and forth from sitting to standing to sitting to standing. They instruct you to vary your cadence, from
a normal “resting” cadence to high rpm (around 110-120 rpm) sprints. It all seemed easy enough to understand and I
could see the potential for this to be a real a$$ kicker. In the 30 or so minutes of actual spinning
during the orientation, I covered about 6 miles. The instructor said that she was teaching the
5:15 am class on Monday, so I thought it would be good to try a “real” class
with her before going to a class taught by a different instructor.
4:45am on Monday my alarm went off… it felt way too early, but that was probably because I stayed up until 11:30 the night before, because I couldn’t tear
myself away from the New England/San Fran football game. I walked through the door to the spin room at
the same time as another guy from the Saturday intro class. The instructor was happy to see some
returning new faces and we adjusted our bikes and started warming up. After warm up, she commenced to running us
through series of sprints and hills and jumps and more hills and more sprints
and more jumps… I was very happy when the “cool down” finally came 40 minutes
later. Somewhat surprisingly, I managed
to cover over 15 miles during the class.
I was whipped, though. I attended
another class this morning (Wednesday), with a different instructor… her class
was a little more intense, with lots of standing climbs and a whole lot of
jumps.
With different instructors teaching spin each morning, the
variety of instruction might be enough to keep it interesting and not become too monotonous. I think that I might make spin class my
mon/weds/fri workout routine, with weights mixed in on tues/thurs. Now that I have my tentative plan set, all I
have to do is stick to it. The big
problem is that we are heading out of town for the holiday; will I be able to
get back on it after taking a week of for Christmas??? I sure hope so; I know that I will need it
after being around dad’s homemade donuts and cookies! I can’t resist eating those, typically in
large quantities!
Keep It Simple Stupid
On Sunday afternoon I made a run to the grocery store to get
food for the rest of the week, until we head out of town. (The CFO is out of town visiting her family,
so I’m solo this week) Since I’m solo
and we’re leaving town at the end of the week, I didn’t pick up much. However, I did stop by the deli to get some
meat to use for lunch sandwiches. Because
we won’t be home over the weekend and I won’t be making sandwiches then, I
decided to trim my usual half a pound order down to a third of a pound so that
we didn’t have to throw out any leftover meat before we left town. I placed my order for a third of a pound of
ham and watched the college aged woman work the slicer. As the pile of sliced meat grew on the tray,
I started to worry that she miss understood the amount that I requested. She walked over to the scale, placed the meat
on it and the scale read 0.66 pounds… twice what I had ordered. She started to head back towards the slicer to
cut some more so I spoke up and said, “I only asked for a third of a pound.” She then replied, “I know, I need to bring it
up to 0.75 on the scale.”
I paused… told myself “don’t be a jackass,” (which we all
know is often difficult [for me] to do when such an opportunity like this
presents itself) and then tried not to laugh.
After taking a moment to collect myself, I said “a third of a pound
would only read 0.33 on your scale; you are currently at two-thirds of a
pound.” She stood there and thought
about it for a few seconds and then I could almost see a cartoon light bulb
above her head switch on. She
started to turn red and get a bit embarrassed as there were several other
customers standing around watching this unfold.
She then packaged up the quantity that I asked for and sheepishly handed
it to me. Lesson learned for me: just
order deli stuff in half pound increments… none of this complicated “thirds”
stuff. Or, maybe, I should push the
limits and go to eighths or even sixteenths, “Yes, I would like seven-sixteenths
of a pound of smoked ham please.” I can
only imagine the response that request would get.
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