Leave it on the Bike

  S o, I've been shoulder-deep in a few of my favorite things this holiday season.  No, I don't mean in the Julie Andrews, "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..." kind of way.  While I can completely see myself spinning on a gorgeous green hillside somewhere, you already know the type of "spinning" I'm talking about. I'm one of those people who struggles through the pre-holiday madness, who only begins to see the beauty of the season somewhere around 11:59 pm on December 24th.  I'll spare you the internet dirty laundry, but let's just say "Long December" by the Counting Crows (remember that one) was on repeat as my theme song for the month, more than once. I'm not exaggerating when I say the lyrics marked the margins of my graduate school notebooks in 1996.  That year was only to be outdone by December 2003 and a milder version again in 2008. Yeah, I pretty much approach the whole month with a slight PTSD that only...

I t's difficult to believe that it has happened twice in less than 2 months.  I taught 2 classes on the Thursday morning after Hurricane Sandy destroyed our neighborhoods. Then, yesterday, I taught 2 classes on Saturday morning after the unfathomable happened just across the Long Island Sound in Connecticut.  They were 2 very different occurrences,  but both placed me in a similar circumstance. People come to my indoor cycling classes for various reasons.  Of some of them, I am aware. Of some I'm not.  Some come to simply sweat out last night's indulgences. Some come to clear their minds, for just an hour, of an overwhelming life circumstance, such as the illness of a child (true story).  Most people fall somewhere on the continuum between these two extremes.  Because I don't know the specific needs of every student who clips into a bike, I try to create a generalized blend of positivity, encouragement, humor, and my own variation of meditation in mo...

My Indoor Cycling Home W ow, it's been a while and everything has changed.  Well, almost everything.  Almost 2 years ago, I gave up teaching "Spinning®" at a variety of gyms and studios to take on a full-time job as a fitness director and instructor at a brand new studio, which means I am now only teaching on RealRyder® bikes.  I love change. Even though it can be on-your-knees painful at times, I believe in the growth process and all that comes with it. For those of you possibly unfamiliar with RealRyder bikes, they are a relatively new design on an old friend, our stationary indoor cycling bike, that tilt side-to-side, simulating a more natural outdoor cycling ride. That last run-on sentence can not possibly do justice to their design, so I will direct you here for all the detailed info.  Too much time has passed for me to write my intended five-star review of my experience on these bikes, so I'll just end it here. In addition, our brief love affair wit...