We all know that nothing is normal right now. I’m starting to accept that this will be our new reality for a while now. With that realization comes new stresses and new challenges. While it can be hard, I’m still really trying to make the best of a really unfortunate situation and I definitely do not always succeed at that. With so many unknowns, from a personal perspective I’ve had a very stressful last few weeks.
Through all this, I’m extremely fortunate to have built up a pretty great home gym set-up, excluding my newest pride and joy, a spin bike. I’ve been on it on and off in the last month, but I was looking for a new challenge, so this past week, I decided to do one old spin class from each of the years I’ve been teaching. I have all my playlists online, and all my choreography on notecards in a big ziplock bag. So I have everything all the way from the beginning! Last weekend, I picked out my classes.
Doing that first class, it was crazy to think how my beginner spin teacher 20 year old self choreographed that all those years ago. Also, man has music changed…
That first class was hard. My legs were SHOT. But it was also SO fun.
The next morning was 2015.
The first couple of days, my legs were aching the rest of the day and I was pretty wiped out. While I’ve been doing some online classes on the bike, I haven’t done too many of my own classes and honestly my classes are just a different level.
It was also so interesting to think back on where I was in my life when I made these playlists. The 2016 playlist was the last class I taught at my undergrad before graduation. I got major half marathon flashbacks from my 2014 playlist because that was something I was big into during that time in my life.
Around day 4, things started feeling significantly easier and better. I could literally feel my fitness level changing just over the course of a couple of days.
Throughout this week, I had days where I was super stressed on the bike, super anxious on the bike, super sad on the bike. But coming out of today’s ride on day 6, I felt strong. I felt like myself again. What I love so much about spin, is it has the power to break you down and then build you up even stronger. Finding myself again on the bike is something I experienced the several times I went to IDEA World and did like 12 spin classes over the course of 4 days. I remember right before I started vet school, I went to IDEA World. At the time, I remember being so scared to start, so scared that it would be hard and I wouldn’t be able to do it. But on the bike while there, I had the realization that I can do hard things. And I can still do hard things. Here I am, 3 years later, in my last year of vet school, and I more than survived.
I’ve said this before, but throughout all kinds of life changes, the bike will be there for me. Granted, it wasn’t for most of COVID, but now that I have my own, it’s stuck with me!
Also, interestingly, I kept track of average power output for each class to see if I’ve become a harder or easier teacher, and it’s actually been just about the same for each class, the only classes that were a little bit lower were a couple minutes shorter. So I guess I’ve always been tough!
I can’t wait for the day that I can be back in a spin studio teaching again, but until then, I’ll continue to ride.