spinning round and round

Monday night Nancy got stuck at work and asked me to teach her spin class at the Y. 

Recognize this, downtown Y-ers? It's one of the "good" bikes in the bunch of 20 year olds. 

Now I've taught probably hundreds of classes but ZERO since last May when I gave up my U of M class. And for this reason, I was totally nervous! Lucky for me, there was music already there and somebody to set it up too. Being completely terrible with unfamiliar electronics, especially sound systems I'm depending on, I can't tell you how many classes I taught yelling over the music because the mic just wouldn't work. I managed to fiddle with my bike, water bottle, shoes, etc, long enough that I only had to teach about 40 minutes, and it flew by. Pulling out all of my tricks to make them work hard not only caused some red faces, but had me sweating and panting a lot more than I'd expected! I'm usually good at covering up my tiredness by learning how to talk around my heavy breathing, but I was out of practice last night. Thankfully it didn't occur to me until after class that everyone upstairs in the cardio/weight room could hear me breathing too. I'm sure they'll all be trying to join the panter's class next time.


I have really fond memories of my first  4 or 5 years of teaching. It's where I first met Laura, Charlie, Melissa, Lindsay, and so many other awesome friends. That class was so tough that I had to dream up as many new forms of torture as possible. And they still wanted more. So we started swimming beforehand, running afterward, and adding in as many single-legged bounds across the room as possible. I think I even convinced a few people to give triathlon a shot.  :)


In the beginning I'd always go into class a little stressed that I wouldn't do a good job, or I'd bore everyone to death, talk too much, talk too little, play music everyone hated, or whatnot. I'd come out of class so happy, motivated and encouraged. Even last night I got a lot of thank-yous, and a "You had us do a lot more grinding than Nancy usually does, but at least I'm tired now." That's all I can ask for! I think I'm ready to teach again. :)