I had my first fitness

I had my first fitness class tonight, it's called "Schwinn Indoor Cycling" and I have it from 8-9 Monday and Wednesday nights. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to keep up with the tanned and toned young ladies in my class right from the start, and wound up well on my way to a cardiac episode before my body convinced my brain that:

You're not 19 anymore.

It's much more embarassing to be hauled out on a stretcher than to slow down.

Your instructor can't possibly want to give you mouth to mouth, so she's probably okay with you slacking off.

You probably should have gotten in shape before you tried to get in shape.

So, after I burned up my entire supply of ATP, and realized I still had 30 minutes of class left, and I had no idea how I could possibly make it through alive, I decided to start cutting the instructor's resistance changes in half, and to slow my pedaling rate by about one third. That let me catch my breath long enough to do the last 15 minutes or so of the class pretty well, and I didn't wind up dead.

There is one other guy in the class, a young black guy who may run marathons in his spare time. All I know is that he had the energy to be singing along with the dance music while biking, and all I could do at that point is gasp for air while trying not to fall off my bike.

One thing I have to get used to is the bikes have your toes locked into toe clips, and you can't just coast, your feet have to move with the wheel. That's all fine and good, until you have to stand up on the pedals in parts, I do that on my mountain bike all the time, but I usually pause my pedaling while I haul my carcass off the seat. You can't do that on these bikes, so I nearly tossed myself off the bike a few times. It's obviously going to take some practice. In the meantime, I'll make sure to keep myself in the back of the class, so at least the girls will only see my mirror image looking like an idiot, rather than the real me.