Up in Ontario

Spinning Class

The first part to this story is an admission on my part. I go to a gym that some people consider to be a fancy place. The place looks garish, covered in chrome, mirrors and neon signs. But it's a gym; it's a temple of self-love. What do you expect?

I justify my membership to myself in two ways: I like to workout and the gym is located only a two blocks away. But jesus, sometimes it's a hard pill to swallow. My dislike for the place is strong enough that I get up at 6 am during the week to get my workouts done. At that time, a regular few are there, and the place feels less obnoxious, almost friendly. If I went after work when the place is brimming over with keen desk jockeys just off the trading floors - the posing and preening, the self-conscious outfits, the casual questions to the hot bodies, "Do you mind if I work in a set?" - I don't know if I'd be able to stand myself.

So that brings me to this morning, when I tried to get to the gym early, except that a combination of strong coffee and good headlines in The Globe and Mail kept me at the café for too long. I know that by mid-morning on Saturdays the place feels like a freshly kicked anthill - people flinging themselves about in frenetic activity - yet still I dawdled with my newspaper. So when I walked in this morning at 10 am, I faced a phalanx of spandex and nylon.

I started into my workout and, though there were more people than I was used to, it didn't turn out badly. I thought I might escape without having to face anyone flexing in the mirror or talking loudly about their max bench. I was just finishing up my last exercise when the spinning class started off in one corner.

Now, I have never taken a spinning class. So I have no idea what they are like and they may very well be wonderful. I may be missing something. But seeing about a dozen women wailing away on stationary bikes as if they were dogs tied to the bumper of the station wagon, and the wagon was travelling along at highway speeds, did nothing to make me think that I would enjoy it.

Jesus it was a spectacle. An instructor faced the class on his own stationary bike, and he had a microphone headset. Through the speakers he sounded like the caricature of a drill instructor in a military movie. The drill sergeant of Full Metal Jacket comes to mind, with the language cleansed of swears. "Faster!" he yelled at them. "Faster! Now take it up a notch." The lot of them bobbed frantically on their machines, as if the station wagon had pulled into the passing lane.

I watched them for a minute and they all had the gleeful zeal of the devoted in their eyes. They were all women too; all of them, already thin and buffed up like in the magazines. What were they getting out of being yelled at? Someone walked by me, saw me staring, and said, "That's the advanced class."

The instrutor barked at the women to glide for a minute. As the minute elapsed he counted down the seconds, as if a bomb were about to go off, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now go, go, go, go! Top speed!" I laughed out loud. The scene reminded me of something I heard a comedian say about his experience at Starbucks. "It's as if the Nazis won the war."

That was enough for me. I jogged the two blocks home.