lxforever

“You’ve taken a spin class before, right?”

—Sara, 1/15/17, second only to: “Youv’e been stand-up paddle-boarding before, right?”, lol

I knew I was in trouble when I looked down and saw we were only nine minutes into the 60-minute-long class. (I should have known it with Sara’s innocent question.) Breathing hard, calling upon those weak weak legs that stay weak despite attempts, sniffling and sweating and struggling to stay in motion. The music pounded, the disco lights glittered in a spiral. “Dial it back to a FOUR!”, the instructor shouted, as I laughed in my head and went from my three to a zero without delay, ‘resting’ but not really as I sat back down. “RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT!”, the yells came, rightleftrightleft, keepitgoing keepitgoing, shaking my head to the music to distract myself, looking down and up and down again. Spitting and sweating and all the disgusting things, laughing when the instructor came to shame me into speeding up, shaking my head as I laughed in my head, watching my shaky body in the mirror, shrugging it off, challenging myself the most in over a year. How awesome our bodies are, what a gift to sweat to rap and hip hop and other pseudo-badass tunes in a suburban studio surrounded by other moms and brothers and daughters, just people, even as I feel like I can’t possibly go on. “I could write a whole blog post about this,” I said at the end, and I did.

I can”t wait to go back!