I was sitting around watching some late night TV the other day when one of those fitness infomercials came on. But this one wasn’t for the Insanity Workout or P90X, it was for some kind of Spinning Workout.
So I hop over to Amazon and find about 120 Spinning DVDs. Well, I guess I am a bit behind the times here.
So I got one called Spinerval Ultra Conditioning. I like the cutesy name and it’s a workout that combines stationary bike work with pushups and dumbbells. It’s an intense workout, but any DVD based training is easier than hitting the road-you can always turn off the DVD, but you still have to ride home from a regular bike ride.
About twenty-five years ago, when Greg LeMond was winning the Tour de France and everyone he competed against had names no one in America could pronounce, I fell in love with cycling. I read odd bicycle racing magazines, learned that there were other Tours besides the one in France, and worked on those names of the greats of the sport. I also had an old bike with killer gears that I rode a hundred miles a week.
My current bike is a Trek with an old set of Look pedals and a pair of Look shoes to go with them. I still have my Lycra cycling togs and a couple of pairs of fingerless gloves with padded palms. And I have a cheapie stationary bike that I got on sale at Sears. It’s good enough for a DVD spinning class.
Doing the Spinerval workouts is fun, but it is also pretty hard work. I have always thought that I could just hop back on a bike whenever I wanted and ride off to parts unknown. I’ve always had these dreams of being a long distance cyclist. I did ride about three hundred miles one week, but that is about as far as I ever rode.
I would like to do some cycling in Ireland or Scotland, but that dream has been on the back burner for a very long time. Something about paying two grand to ride a bike seems a tad silly. I wonder if anyone could use a slightly over the hill tour guide?
So I am spinning away the odd hour and thinking about all those hours I spent on a bike when I was younger. I rode a couple of Centuries, but I never joined any local groups. Never seriously thought about racing. But I did fall in love with a ton of gear, I sold most of the odd stuff on eBay-loopy handlebars, odd shaped gears, shifters, levers and whatnots.
I am going to see if I can handle training a few days a week-if you can Spinervals training. Then all I have to do is win the Lotto and I’ll cycle through Ireland or maybe Australia.
Hey, it could happen.
