Thursday morning @ Recycle

I took my first class with Rachele this morning in the south end.  The studio dubs it the Reascend class implying: hills, hills, hills.  Right from the start Rachele described how, in a full pedal stroke, the heel should almost lead our downstroke.  I find this true especially at higher resistances, which is exactly where we were going.  This also takes me back to one of my first spinning memories over at BSC Fenway, when a cyclist attending the class (who spends a lot of time cycling outside) was giving me some pointers.  Back then (3 years ago?) I had issues with my calves cramping up, and this guy told me that a proper pedal stroke may fix the issue.  The stroke as he described it will feel almost as though you’re able to scrape the ground from heel-to-toe as you come around (he said: “like scraping shit off the bottom of your shoe” … kind of silly, but hey – I remember it now still).  This is what I think Rachele was getting at as well.

So … we climbed a ton of hills, most pretty heavy, and the music was all new to me (forgive me for no links) and I loved it.  The class – to my distinct surprise – also flew by!  I imagined a class focused around hills would actually start to lose its spark but Rachele is incredibly motivating and it’s clear that she’s up there busting her ass at least as hard as we were.

We spent some time crouched really far over, such that our elbows were sitting on the cross bar and our hands grabbing the center handlebar set.  A little uncomfortable for me, but I think this just means I need to stretch more.  Also it was clear that in this position I was isolating a set of muscles that don’t usually get that kind of attention (it almost felt like inner-thigh muscles).

Fantastic workout!  The last thing I wanted to do was leave … because overnight it got to be 20 degrees and windy.  #bostonwinter

Wednesday morning @ recycle

My first trip back to recycle this morning was a sweaty one.  Last night it felt like a cyclone was hammering the city, and as our apt is up high the wind howled past us and the rain battered the windows.  I didn’t get the sleep that I wanted, so hitting up class was harder than usual.

I knew Christina didn’t show up to help me relax, either … a lot of fast arm pumps to some new (to me) music including some new (to the world) Rihanna … the song title eludes me, though.

I struggled during the shoulder and bicep track that she led, but I forgot all about my arms once we hit the last two songs.  Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity was a heavy, uphill seated climb.  When Christina climbs she also somehow manages to pulse out a beat with her legs; it looks like she’s kind of dancing, and it looks like a lot of fun.  I try to emulate it, but I fail … I’ll need to ask her about this.  It only works on a very high resistance, though: perhaps I need to get over myself and give it some more gear.

The class ended with Billie Jean.  I saw on Christina’s interview page that if she could teach a one-artist class it would be to MJ.  No doubt; she’s perfected the art.  We spun to Billie Jean with moderate resistance, the challenge being to keep with the beat.  And it’s a fast beat – 117 bpms according to this site.  The class exercise peaked when we had to maintain the pace in position 3, which is just hell on your glutes and hamstrings.  The freaking song is 4:54 seconds long, meaning that my right foot hit a stroke over 550 times to end the class.  Gotta love the ass-kicking (molding?) workout you get here.

conflicts of interest

If you were fortunate enough to pass by the site last night (11/29) or early this morning, you'll note that my initial writings from the last two posts (Friday morning @ Recycle 2/2 and Tuesday morning @ BSC DTX) seemed kind of ... sloppy.

This is because I was a little sloppy, having taken a few (good) strides towards completing my 100-Beers-In-6-Months Challenge at the Parish Cafe last night with some coworkers :)

So I've updated the posts with what I really meant to say.  If you've got one of those clever aggregators (Google Reader!) you may even be able to go back in time and check them out ...

Tuesday morning @ BSC DTX

Today was my first day back from the Thanksgiving holiday.  I ran 3 x times in Tallahassee, but that was still not enough to keep me in stride with my spin workouts.

Meredith showed up early at the gym to make us all look bad, and my gym routine was a little thwarted as I had to walk back to work to grab my shoes and shaving stuff.

Me, strapping in my spin shoes

Class was slated for a full 55 minutes and I was wiped out.  It felt like Meredith stuck around over the holiday, un-phased from the eating holiday, and punished me as soon as I got back.  I managed to weather the climb (my knees felt wobbly), I emptied my water bottle, and I survived my first day back.  The tricep workouts (which she indicated may not comply with the club policy, but she’s a lawyer: I’m sure she can handle it), even without weights, seemed to exhaust me.

It’s time to get back in shape; this is how it starts.

Friday morning @ Recycle (2/2)

I kept on my sweaty long-sleeved shirt and wiped off my bike (futile) after the first class.  I refilled my water bottle.  I was happy to see Christina stick around with me to complete the double-header with Meredith teaching.

Meredith heated it up quickly with a warmup track and then, sensing my fatigued shoulders I'm sure, led us through an chest & shoulder song (are you serious right now?) where I felt like screaming.  Instead I just called her a lot of mean names in my head for the full 4 minutes.  Given how hard she drives her classes I'm sure that I'm not the first.

My favorite section of the session came when she jammed the new hit from David Guetta and Usher, Without You.  This song seemed somewhat questionable to me at first but then Meredith crescendo(e)s into a medium/high-resistance climb and we hit the chorus: invigorating!  The whole class is in sync and it's what spinning was meant to be.  The hard beat of the music unites the class ("shoulder to shoulder" was the call) and everyone works harder than they bargained for.  Great success.

Friday morning @ Recycle (1/2)

Christina taught a full class early this Friday morning.  There was a lot of hard work done to the tune of songs that were less pop-y and more focused.  I felt a few cardio zen moments (endorphins, perhaps).  In particular there was a 2:30 - long song with a relatively fast pace.  Christina put us at a low-moderate resistance (6.5 or 7) and the challenge was to keep the pace of the song for the entire duration.  And we were to do so while crouched in position 3.  She encouraged us the entire time given how difficult the pace was, and afterward gave a little pat on the back, telling the group that when Recycle opened earlier in 2011 (is this right?) almost no one could complete the track.  I believe it; I certainly couldn't have.

It's a mark of Christina's knack as an instructor that she can keep me motivated and excited through softer or slower songs (I typically prefer hard, fast beats); I enjoyed the hell out of that class :-)

To round out the challenge, she ended the Reboot class working our arms.  She really ground them out, which in general would be fine except for this was a double-header and Meredith was up next ...

Thursday morning @ BSC Copley

BSC Copley is located close to my work, so my morning gym routine involves packing all of my clothes, my suit, sandwich, apple, water bottle, etc., strapping on the iphone headphones, and asking (begging?) Siri to play the next episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast (this week's was on Air Force One: awesome) as I walk.  As I write that it sounds a little exhausting but it's become second nature since I realized that I like to get my workout over with at the beginning of the day.  Also it makes the rest of my day that much better: I have more energy and my brain is already fired up for dealing with them pesky state regulators.

Meredith's class this morning (11/17) was just such a spark.  I appreciate how she's brought some of the Reboot class tactics (crunches and tricep exercises) to her other classes.

When I first contemplated writing this blog, one of the posts I had in mind discussed Meredith's playing of Dream On by Aerosmith.  It's probably the most exhausting (read: rewarding) way to end spin class that I've been a part of thus far.  The meat and potatoes of the ride are sprints (6 in total I think; 5 all in the last 1:45) done at very high resistance, in position 3.  Think of the little guitar pulses that happen after the lyrics "... the good lord-a take me away" - that's when they occur.  I end up naturally isolating my torso / hips while we crush out the sprints, which are about 8 seconds long.

Back in April I took her class at BSC Government Center and I recorded my heart rate.  You can see my effort in the following graph:

I don't recall the rest of the class but here I've isolated my heart rate during the sprints in Dream On - it was the last section of class (top-right of the above):

I hope to post more of these heart rate graphs and correlate them with the various exercises we do during class in the future.  For instance, you can see around the 10-min mark that we were sprinting (180 bpms) and that my average heart rate crept up slowly throughout the class (I believe the mean was 157).

I'll be posting about my double-header last Friday in a bit; I'm on Thanksgiving vacation right now in Florida and taking it a little easy (hence the light spin schedule on your right).

Wednesday morning @ Recycle

I hit up the 6am, sold out Reboot class this morning in the South End.  Something that always amazes me about Christina our instructor (and pretty much each of them @ Recycle) is how she can even manage to speak by the end of class.  I’ve never been able to …

The Reboot class mixes up spinning with one or two tracks working on arms.  Today’s arm track was the worst (best?) I’ve ever done.  For the entire song we lifted our whole arms over our heads and did some tricep-working skull-crusher-type moves.  This got tiring quickly.  We continued by arching the whole arm / weight apparatus left and then right, to the music, like we were directing traffic.  If the cadence was about 80 bpms, the song lasts for 4 minutes, and we hit a move on every other beat, that’s still 160 reps on our arms.  Spinners were dropping (their arms) like flies (who have arms?) like I’ve never seen before in that class; I’m not sure a single person finished the exercise the whole way through.

Also I’m going to start another motif on this blog whenever I hear songs in spin classes that have language relating to spinning.  I’m going to call these spinclusive lyrics (see the new label, below).  Being somewhat self-referential, they remind me autological words, which my friend Alexandria (@allyeats)recently pointed out to me.  I’ve got a few of these on the backburner for y’all, but Christina popped out a new one today and I was loving it.  The song is Kick Push by Lupe Fiasco*.  We were hitting our downstrokes and upstrokes to the beat at a pretty high resistance while Fiasco was singing “kick, push, kick, push, kick …”.  This is a prime example of the spinclusive lyrics, describing exactly what we were doing with our legs as the song was playing.  You can see the smirk on my sweaty face whenever I recognize one.


* I’m nominating ‘Lupe Fiasco’ for All-Time Favorite Artist Name

Tuesday evening @ CAC

This was my first RPM spin class with David, the group fitness instructor over at CAC.  I have taken a few other group classes over there (body pump, zumba, and body combat*) with David and his energy translates perfectly into RPM.  He was co-teaching with another instructor (Izzy, I think, and I fear that I may be mispronouncing the name >.<) and began by giving everyone some really good instruction.

Here is a picture of the CAC spinning room from above.

You can see that it is a converted racquetball court, and they have made some efforts to ensure good sound quality there.  Actually CAC’s former spinning room was it’s main group exercise room – a big, open space – and bikes had to be pulled off of the wall as class started, and replaced when it finished.  This is a clear improvement; I’m happy to see the redoubled effort on their spinning program.

Back to the class.  One thing that strikes you immediately with David is how motivating he is.  He’s super positive and smiles full-time, even when it’s a grimace-smile and you can tell he’s working really hard.  I worked somewhat hard through the first 2/3 of the RPM class (some seating sprints with low-moderate resistance were tough) but where the workout really climaxed was on the last song, the RPM-ified version of Linkin Park’s Numb.  We’re crushing the hill at 80% or 90% of our max resistance for the majority of the song until the last hill climb.  David rallied the troops (not many instructors do this weel) and elicits yells, grunts, and hoo-ahs from the spinners.  The final < 1 minute of climb was so intense I was lightheaded.  Water bottle: emptied.  Great class.

*shameless plug: everyone who can should start attending the body combat sessions over at CAC because my awesome wife co-teaches there somewhat regularly, and is working to get certified by Les Mills (being certified as an actuary only takes you so far).  She’s a bad-ass.

Tuesday morning @ BSC DTX

Meredith packed another class full today, which included my former coworker Rachel (@creativeactuary) along with most of what I’ve seen as The Regulars there.  Last week I rode down the elevator after class with just one Regular, an older gentleman who usually sits at about the centroid of the room of bikes.  “Meredith’s been kicking my ass for a few months now; I’m hooked.”  This is a standard reaction: spinning does not discriminate on age or gender when it comes to working out, and Meredith is a prime conduit for the experience.

Today’s particular ass-kicker, if you were honest with yourself, was to Ke$ha’s Tik Tok.  The honesty here is key since spinning is an at-your-own pace sort of exercise.  There is plenty of encouragement from the other group members and from fierce instructors like Meredith, but you could go through class just piddling around for 45 minutes if you’d like.  I don’t like, though.

On Tik Tok, we spun at a medium-high resistance, with wicked intense accelerations in the saddle during the choruses followed by brief stints in position 3.  I forgot my bottle of water today (big mistake) and I was punished for it.  Victory was claimed, though, at the end of the routine: I walked out energized for quite a long day.

Thursday morning @ BSC Copley

I got to the gym a little earlier than usual to do some bicep and back workouts.  Ever since recycle has got me lifting weights while spinning, I’ve decided that I could definitely afford to be a little stronger here.

Meredith teaches on Thursday mornings, and the class is completely full (with waiting list) because these folks know what’s good for them.  Some familiar songs popped up during the spin class, including Womanizer (just now finding out that this is by Britney …) which, when taught by Meredith, is like your bike just transmogrified into an obstacle course.  We’re working triceps with upper-body pushups on the handlebars, we’re sprinting in positions 2 and 3 (and 1, if you’ve got the energy), we’re crunching quickly for an ab workout.  It’s all there.  And hardly anyone can keep up.

I drank 20 oz of water prior to class, 20 during class, and I’ve already finished the next 20 at work.  Were the Mrs. and I to be here during the Thanksgiving week (Meredith says she is teaching a ton in town), I’d probably try to OD on this class before OD’ing on Turkey and mom’s stuffing, but we’ll be back at home.

Wednesday morning @ Recycle

Our instructor Christina gave us no rest this morning.  I showed up at 5:50 and 5 bikes were already taken, giving early indication of the fervor of the group.  The class was almost all 70’s and 80’s songs, including In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins, wherein we climbed for the first few minutes pretty heavily, saving our last bit of strength for the notorious drum segue (we were reminded to think: Mike Tyson in The Hangover)

Perhaps I’m just coming across this trend but my last couple of classes have pushed me through some challenging work in position 2.  Christina beat the sweat out of us through Funky Cold Medina, and then we had a monster climb with Another One Bites the Dust.

It helps that Christina (and really, each of the instructors this blog has mentioned) is up there working at least as hard as us in class.  Front row bikes only intensify the workout.

ps – fun fact.  I heard on this Radiolab podcast that – because CPR must be executed at just the right bpms – it can be useful to have a song you know singing in your head at approx. 100 bpms.  One of those useful songs is: Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees.  A second song?  Another One Bites the Dust.  (eesh)

Tuesday morning @ BSC DTX

I felt like Meredith was on a mission to punish me for spinning too much.  After last night’s class I was un peu fatigué but one goal I have is to continue to push myself a little harder each week, lest I get complacent or lackadaisical.

So with the exception of a couple of moderate climbs we were flying at low-medium resistance the whole time, all over the bike.  I didn’t make it through the MJ song, but I gave it my best at the time.

I snapped a couple of shots of the bikes at BSC DTX (I will go more in depth into various cycles eventually on the blog) so you can see what we’re working with:

And here is the cycling studio from the outside:

All photos I post will be collected on the photo page for a cumulative gallery of spinning.

My legs feel pretty much wasted away about now, though this is my preference as my job involves sitting at a desk or a conference table most of the day.

Monday evening @ Recycle

Aly taught a Remix class at the studio tonight.  This class combines 45 minutes of spinning with 30 more of yoga.  I'll tackle each in turn.

The spinning was agressive (eventually I'm going to run out of synonyms here ...) with a couple of hill climbs - some in the saddle.  The undercurrent of the exercise - we probably jammed it like 4 or 5 times - was a quick run in position 2.  This puts serious tension on your quads and also your knees.  I find sometimes after an entire week of spinning that during the final workout my knees will ache a little during intense position-2 workouts.  In these cases I'll play it safe and slow down a little, or put more pressure on the handlebars (thereby taking pressure off of the knee).  Seriously, though, I don't know where Aly gets the energy; she was non-stop and the rest of the class was struggling to keep up.

I don't feel quite qualified to give any opinion on a yoga class - this was actually my first routine (did I hear her call it a 'practice'?).  I'm pretty happy with myself that I stuck it out and went through each of the motions.  I imagine my amateurishness was pretty obvious to everyone, but even to this layman the positions and stretches and deep breathing were just what I needed after the intensity of the spin.

I had a pretty hard day at work, and this Remix spin and yoga class gave me a little Serenity Now moment on the way home.

Saturday morning (11am) @ Recycle

So this day was a two-a-day for me, and back-to-back which is quite grueling.  Especially when Meredith is the second instructor.  She was on fire: we were sprinting and doing really quick crunches and tricep pumps in the Reboot class.  You’ll probably recall from an earlier post that the Reboot class involves an arm workout as well as spinning, and this was an Advanced Reboot class, lasting for a whole hour.

We hit the (now-)classic Avril tune, What The Hell, and sprinted all out.  If you’re new to spinning and haven’t exercised to this one before I recommend putting it on your headphones, sitting down at a bike in the gym, and sprinting all out to the choruses.  It’s invigorating.  One of Meredith’s strengths – and why I continued to take her class to begin with – is picking up on songs that make for kick-ass spinning.

Saturday morning (10am) @ Recycle

Aly at the Recycle Studio taught a vibrant class yesterday morning.  The studio was packed and luckily I was able to secure one of the front-row bikes.  Aly taught a Request class: the theme was Chris Brown v Rihanna.  I was a little skeptical at first but that was mainly driven by my own ignorance of the Chris Brown and Rihanna catalogs, and how well they are adapted to the spin track.  There are a lot of quick, hard beats - well suited to the exercise.

I always enjoy attending classes from instructors for the first time; there’s a learning curve that in itself is exciting.  While spinning has it’s own jargon (check out the glossary section!), and we can hear the positions and exercises that are being called out, it’s a goal of mine to understand the aims of the instructor and which muscles they intend each song to work out.  It’s helpful for me when I hear “your quads should be on fire” or “you should really feel this in your hamstrings”, since I know if I am on the right track or need to change something up.

Aly’s class was nicely choreographed – there were a couple of cool dance-ish moments where you could tell everyone was getting into it – and the climbs were rigorous.  She’s a very encouraging and challenging instructor.

Thursday morning @ BSC Copley

I had a windy walk to this gym, conveniently located a block from my office, and I got there just in time to set my Full Load of stuff in a locker and get to the studio.  Meredith warmed us up quickly with Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition and then we quickly hit some sprints, up-hill with Aerosmith.  Not the easiest start to my day.

I was particularly crushing Lady Gaga’s You and I (I’d link the video but it’s raunchy, and my grandmother reads this blog).  The pace is moderate-fast, and Meredith demands a fairly high resistance.  I went probably a little higher than I was comfortable with, and challenged myself to keep the pace as long as possible.  I was in the front row and I grimaced a lot into the mirror.

I’m taking the day off exercising tomorrow since I’m out watching the Seminoles play BC tonight here in Boston and friends are in town, etc.

Wednesday evening @ Recycle

The Recycle Studio is located on Tremont street in Boston's South End.  Recycle serves up a unique and satisfying spinning experience.   This blog will start to feature reviews of each of the spinning studios around town that I've visited, and I'll go into a lot more detail on each, but for now start by checking out all of their locations at Bikeurious' latest addition, the studio locations page (also found in the tabs at the top of the home page).

Meredith turned me on to Recycle many months ago and I try to treat myself to a ride there at least once a week.  She was teaching the Reboot class tonight, involving some fiery spin as well as some arm workouts.  These bicep, back, and shoulder exercises are performed with weights (2 lbs each ... don't knock it till you try it) that are provided on the bike.

The bikes here feel great, and I put on some serious resistance for a few hill climbs.  I also tried my best to keep pace with MJ's They Don't Care About Us in various positions.  It's my recent favorite spinning challenge.  Meredith confessed at the start that she's lifted it from another Recycle instructor; I'll be covering that class soon as well.  One move I tried to pull off a little more precisely this ride was keeping my center of gravity pulled way, way back as we held on to the center, protruding handlebars.  It was an effort, but I feel I left with a better glute workout than usual.  I'll let you be the judge of that, though.

A successful spin (sweat soaking through my jacket as I left) to top off a challenging day.

Wednesday morning @ Cambridge Athletic Club (CAC)

My wife and I went to Natalie's RPM class this morning at CAC.  It was a pretty chilly walk across the salt-and-pepper bridge but the first track got us all warmed up.

The class was quite challenging.  A couple of the songs involved a pretty fast-paced climb where we had a lot of resistance applied (or "on the fly"); I was sweating profusely.  I was thankful for some of the built-in breaks that RPM has, where we do a few shoulder rolls, etc., before continuing to punish our legs.

Other challenges for us in the class were a 75-second sprint (ouch) and a few hard seated climbs.  All-in-all great positive instruction from Natalie, good song selection, and a hard workout.

what is RPM?

Spinning is a generic term for the group exercise class where we all get on bikes (unicycles, really :) and get our workout by spinning the pedals while listening to music, taking directions from the instructor.  The curriculum of the class is decided by the instructor.

RPM (rotations per minute - get it?) is a particular brand of spinning from those fitness buffs over at Les Mills (motto: For a Fitter Planet).  It differs from general spinning in that the instructor can choose only from a certain set of songs.  Moreover the positions and resistances that the instructor calls our are prescribed by the company.  In order to teach an RPM class the instructor must get certified by Les Mills, taking training sessions and satisfying their requirements by demonstrating that they can successfully teach.

While some may see the imposed rigidity as a weakness - the instructor is limited in their motions and their song selection - it serves a purpose.  Les Mills is guaranteeing that their brand reputation is maintained across the country/globe (many gyms offer all sorts of Les Mills classes) and that each class has a similar feel.

I rather enjoy RPM classes: I think the routines are fairly challenging and the song selection is both appropriate and fun to spin to.  I understand why gyms employ the brand.  And my class tomorrow morning is just such a class (you will get an update of course).

If you're interested in watching some spinning here is Jared teaching at Cambridge Athletic Club (CAC), where I'll be in the am.

Tuesday morning @ Boston Sports Club (BSC) Downtown Crossing (DTX)

I walked from my apt to BSC DTX, getting there at around 6 to secure a front-row bike.  Ever since Meredith started teaching on Tuesday at 6:30 here, the class has been packed, maybe one or two of the 25 bikes left open.  The studio is completely walled with mirrors, crucial in my opinion, and the dude next to me was really into it: vocal grunts, hoots, and all.

Meredith – her name will come up a lot I’m guessing - taught for 50 minutes this morning and I worked pretty hard.  I don’t like to set the bar low or anything, but working ‘pretty hard’ this morning is actually exceeding expectations given the volume of the blood punch I drank at our Halloween gathering last night.  Fifty minutes is a little longer than the standard BSC spin class, which I’m told is a legacy from the instructor prior to Meredith who would teach for an hour.

Solid start to a Tuesday.

your first day spinning

Spinning is a group exercise class.  If you've never been before, this is roughly what you should expect on your first outing (inning?).

A median class length is about 45 minutes, with a slower warm-up track to start with and probably some stretching at the end of class.

You pick a spot in class (expect future posts on this), mount your bike (expect future posts on this), clip in, drop your water bottle into the slot, and get comfortable with your spinning motion (expect future posts on this).

Right in front of you on the cross bar is a resistance dial of some sort.  Take off all the resistance (counter-clockwise) and feel how there’s pretty much no road under you; you’re coasting down a hill made of spongy rubber or firmer pillows.

Start to increase that resistance and feel the tire grip the road.  Keep turning, increasing the resistance until you pretty much can’t pedal anymore, just to get a feeling for how sensitive each turn on the dial really is (these vary a lot by bike / age of bike).

The instructor mounts his bike (or her bike, but until we’re talking about instructors by name we’ll just stick with ‘his’, okay?) and introduces himself and gives you a brief description of his style of instructing (many more posts to come on this).  He takes his N-1st generation iPod out of his pocket, plugs it into the sound system (which you just noticed for the first time: speakers are everywhere) and gets you started on a familiar song with a medium-fast pace.  The music is louder than you are normally comfortable with.

Perhaps he walks you through some stretches now, perhaps he doesn’t.

Then class begins and you’re pushing through 9 or 10 songs.  These songs are not chosen idly.  Each one represents an enormous hill, a flat road for all-out sprinting, a fast-paced pop song intended for ‘jumping’ around the different positions of the bike, etc.  The instructor will call out various positions (you guessed it: more posts soon) and the approximate resistance for which you should aim.  If you’re in the front and there are mirrors in the room, you watch yourself and the reflections of the 15 others for the entire time.  You get a sense for the group commitment.  Your pedal stroke matches the beat of the music which matches the pedal strokes of your fellow spinners.

By the end of class you are a sweaty mess, you are thankful for the oscillating fan in the room, and you are out of water.  With your towel you wipe off your brow, your elbows (sweat pools here a lot), and the back of your neck and stretch out some more.  You wipe off your bike because srsly it’s quite gross by now, you thank the instructor, and you go check the calendar taped to the wall to see when the next classes are.

Pilot post

Upon hearing that I'm going spinning many of my guy friends have responded "wow dude that sounds pretty feminine".  But have they tried it out?  Usually they haven't.  Well, I tell my manly man friend, once you have given it a shot you will be able to say with all your masculine confidence, "wow dude that is pretty feminine."

Here I'm totally kidding.  In fact what goes on in the spinning room (typically called a studio) is solid cardiovascular exercise, pure and simple.  When instructed properly spinning is both motivating and entertaining.

My name is Robert and I'm a thirty year old actuary, recently married.  Bikeurious is a blog that will explore the spinning experience in and around Boston, MA, following spin trends and offering my commentary on it all.  I'm glad to have you along for the ride.