Tale from the Orem Recreation Center - The Stepford Spinner

What is it about my spinning class that makes me feel so damn stupid? Is it the fact that my instructor insists on my name being Linda even though I have been telling her it is Cate since February? Does it have something to do with the music selection including Grease Lightning sing alongs then techno rhythms and finally Cat Scratch Fever? Would it be okay if my instructor wasn't panting the words to John Mellencamp's Hurts So Good when we're "climbing a hill"? Would it be less embarassing if she stopped asking me to sing the words because she "knows that I know them"? How could I not know them after listening to them every Tuesday night for the past 5 months? Do we really need to draw attention to the fact that I now know every lyric by heart?

There are these moments during the class when I get this fear that someone I know but not well enough, someone who would judge me like a boy who I once liked and then dumped me or a girl who I always thought was prettier or cooler than me, will walk in and see me. And there I'll be spinning my legs, sweating like Rush Limbaugh in a Guatamalan summer, breathlessly singing the lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama. It's as if I am Jim Cary of a comedic Truman show that people get their kicks from watching me pant, spin, and not go anywhere while singing on demand. There is something so demeaning about taking commands from a woman with hotdog-bangs on a stationary bike. When she asks me to "add on more gear" to what I am already trying to spin I get this inclination to punch her right where her stupid, masochistic Stepford spinning grin is.

But none of this has prevented me from putting in my 50 minutes once a week. And I am pretty sure that this weekly sentence has had something to do with me taking 5 minutes of my 10K a month ago. So really I don't think I'll be giving this habit up too soon. I just hope that Night at the Roxbury songs don't start creeping into my running mixes. Once they do, action will have to be taken.