Geek in progress

For those in doubt, I am still taking spinning classes on a regular basis. I only skipped two lessons, due to having nobody to babysit the kids. I feel like I am edging closer to the first plateau, on which it is supposedly easier to keep going for an hour.

Last Tuesday, I managed to increase the resistance each time we were asked to. Of course, much depends on the bike. On some bikes I cannot get the wheels turning at resistance setting 4, whereas on others – the ones I prefer – I can keep going at level 6. Needless to say, the higher the level at which I can keep riding, the more fine grained I can make my workout session. Still, I was quite pleased, though it had been the toughest session I took since I started.

In the beginning I had problems with riding as fast as I could without resistance. Somehow, when my brain started to think about what my legs were doing and what they are used to doing, I messed up the rhythm, causing strain to my knees. But, I must admit I have improved a lot, and I’m more or less able to really go as fast as I can without missing a beat. Keeping my heels down helps a lot too.

But, alas, no additional weigh loss.

No, I did not quit (yet).

I got tortured twice more this week. On Monday, I took an easy session. I managed to do everything at a pretty high resistance setting. The last race was too much though. My brain seems to want to think too much, and there’s no other way but increasing the resistance to slow down fast. So, once I started thinking, my feet stopped rotating at the high speed they had attained and I was on for a momentarily bumpy ride, until I raised gears. The key problem is that you cannot hold your feet still while the wheel keeps spinning, as you can on a normal bike. But heck, I was glad I managed to put in the required effort.

The session on Tuesday was far harder. I could not get my wheels to spin round with gears set to 4 (there are 8 settings, 1 is easiest), unless I pushed really hard. So there was no way to make speed beyond gear 3. Afterward, I asked the tutor to take a peek, and he told me somebody had messed with it. Sucks, but by then it was too late. I was also told to keep my heels down (I had no idea biking resembled horseback riding), especially when going fast, otherwise the leg muscles tend to tensen up and start to hurt.

This morning when I rode Elias to school, I really felt like I had excercised, which, I think is a good thing. Seemingly, spinning helps to build up condition quickly, so if I can make it past the initial few months of training … I’ll be fine. The good news is that my scale is showing about 1.2 kg less (on average) than before I started. Less candy helps too

Today was I took my first spinning session. The fitness club offers two options, easy-spinning and normal spinning. Because I have not been doing any serious sports activity the last, say 6 years, we started out with an easy session.

Well, I’m still alive, and I enjoyed it much more than I had expected. I was sweating like a pig though. But that seems to be part of the fun. I’m not very used to the gears system yet, as I needed to crank up the resistance a bit more, according to the tutor, as I started going too fast when I stood up. Nonetheless, I rode most of the session at the third highest gear, which I think is a pretty awesome performance, considering where I’m coming from.

Next session: Monday 15th.

Goal: losing at least 5kg (preferably most of that in the abdominal region .