If you follow me on Facebook (and chances are you do, cuz that's nearly the only source for links to this blog) then you know that I've been going to spinning classes at the gym as regularly as one can with two two-year-olds, and no motivation. In each of those torturous classes I sit on a bike going no where, surrounded by more-or-less the fittest people I ever see at the gym, in a tiny room with the lights dimmed to nothing and the ceiling fans providing inadequate cooling for so much heavy breathing in a public forum. It allows the perfect opportunity to simultaneously push myself as hard as I can physically while closing my eyes and letting my mind take me somewhere else. Usually that somewhere else is outside with my kids. We are running together, or playing, or I'm on the bike effortlessly pulling a 20 pound trailer laden with 57 pounds of child up a long hill, all while singing the abc's or something equally as stimulating, to keep the kiddo's happy. In all of those scenarios I'm NOT 100 pounds overweight, and nothing feels as hard to me as it actually is. I guess that's why I keep showing up for the classes.
Yesterday I decided it was time to take the spinning to the road, and I took the boys on a bike ride around the neighborhood. They
sat comfortably buckled into their bike trailer (thanks so much to my dear former co-worker for handing it down to us, or else they would have been running behind me with dog leashes),
whimsically watching the world wisp by at a snails pace, the wind in
their hair, the bugs in their teeth, while I huffed and puffed out
front on the bike. The sun was shining, and there was enough cloud cover to keep us all cool. We did a trial run on the bikes the day before with Amy to the park and back to boost my confidence. It was time to let loose and see where we got. My goal was to stay on the bike long enough to not have to feel guilty about not going to the gym. I made it 45 minutes, two loops around the neighborhood, up one giant hill and several other smaller ones, and though we broke no land speed records, I can say that all that work at the gym manifested itself on the road quite nicely. There was no jolly singing to the children, just a lot of that fore-mentioned heavy breathing, but every person we saw got an enthusiastic wave and a "hi" yelled at them courtesy of Ben. There wasn't a single person who could resist at least a grin at being greeted by such a friendly kid.
Today we were back at the gym, taking a break from the bike, where I "swam" laps and pretended that I was getting some exercise. I use quotes around the word swam because I can't exactly call my hybrid of freestyle and dog paddling swimming. I guess my next physical challenge should be to learn to swim. I wonder if I got really good, if I could swim with my eyes closed, imagining that I'd actually bothered to use a razor before donning the bathing suit, and that all that buoyancy was due to my skillful ability in the water, and not all my flab. Maybe I should just stick to the bike.
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