-This special guest post is written by Ted’s camerman
�
Ted, the President of Motivational Athletics and I attended Michael McCormack’s indoor spin class in San Francisco yesterday, at Mike’s M2 Revolution studio. This time we traded in our cameras for some new gear, cycling shoes and spandex. Ready for the stationary bike! I know, sounds funny right? Well let me tell you, it was about as funny as a rubber crutch.

The spin class was around 30 individuals, each sporting cycling apparel including the fancy shorts, tops and shoes with nifty clipping devices. Let me preface this story with the fact that I have never so much as sat on a stationary bike for more than twenty minutes. Ted decided to take the spin class to hit his 90 day goal of losing 25 pounds and getting in great shape. I normally would be tagging along as the camera operator, but not this time. Ted went out and bought me some shoes with clips and a pair of bike shorts that I thought I would never see myself wearing. Ted said, “You’re all dialed. Got you some shoes and shorts, here we go!” I was nervous, but was looking forward to the challenge. I should mentinon before I continue that we were riding along to America’s Best Bike Rides cycling DVDs

For the past ten years I have had an “on again – off again” romance with personal fitness. I should mention that the stationary bikes in Michael’s gym are top of the line and are made by a company called Saris. The Saris CycleOps stationary bikes measure time, cadence, watts and KCals. I say this because up until yesterday I had no idea what any of that was, and still don’t completely. However this truly is revolutionary in the sense that one can determine their fitness level by measuring output. The results were – I am probably in the worst shape of anyone in that spin class. My cadence stayed around 90 and my watts never broke 180. Ted on the other hand is Dutch and became Zen with the stationary bike. He hit 350 watts+ on the climbs! It was all I could do to stay on the stationary bike for the grueling 1 hour 10 minute session. My inner dialogue was, “Just keep moving your legs, failure is not an option.”

As the other cyclists around me worked hard, poured sweat and moved to the driving music I had brief moments of anxiety where I was imagining myself falling over and spewing my kombucha on that posh studio floor. There were some attractive women in the spin class as well, so needless to say that would have been uber-embarrassing. I kept putting my head down as I was just struggling to keep my breath. Michael checked up on us often, as he would most new pupils I’m sure, and he seemed to be amazed at what poor shape I was in. This made me want to go harder and really motivated me. I bit my lip, took a swig of Gatorade and charged on, resisting the urge to look at the clock on the wall.
�
I was a bit overzealous in the beginning, just out of mere excitement of being on such a sophisticated piece of equipment and under the training of a two time Iron Man Champion. I had to test all the bells and whistles on the CycleOps. There is a knob that you turn to increase or decrease the resistance which in turn raises or lowers your watts. In the beginning I was unaware that I had the resistance cranked and was sure that if I had to go the entire spin class at this level I would be taking the walk of shame across the floor to the locker room after a measly 15 minutes into the spin class. Michael noticed this and recommended that I turn the resistance down a bit. He also mentioned a few things that really hit home during this spin class. The first thing he stressed was the importance of not working out so hard that you can’t complete the session but rather finding that point of comfort and then increasing in intensity, instead of just going all out and getting burned. The next thing he talked about was just to give Ted and I an idea of what competitive cycling athletes are capable of. Michael said to compete and stay with the pack in any major cycling race the athletes output is 3 times their weight in watts for 45 minutes straight! Gulp ) That would mean that I would have to have an output of 630 watts for 45 minutes? I could barely keep my watts up over 100 for the better part of an hour.

In summary this was a very special moment in my life, an introduction into something so exciting, challenging and truly positive. I encourage any one who may be on the fence about joining or participating in a cycling class to take that leap and start now. I did. And I couldn’t be more grateful for this incredible experience. I just can’t wait to do it again.
-Ted’s Camerman

To see the cycling DVDs that we rode to in Michael’s spin class, check out the America’s Best Bike Rides store.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 5:52 am and is filed under Riding a Bike to Lose Weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.