Spin Class Cast of Characters

So I’m still teaching spin. I teach at the YMCA every Tuesday and Thursday and every other Saturday. I’ve been teaching for almost four years now and I still love it. I love the energy, the intensity and most of the time, I love the people in my classes. There are some really positive, lovely folks like Happy Holly, Enthusiastic Emily, Ready-for-anything Rodney, Fun-loving Franny, Chatty Buddies Janie and Mary and almost-pro-biker Brad.

But there are a few weirdos who make me wish my bike wasn’t stationary and that I could run them over. Allow me to introduce them to you:

Bored Barbara: BB has been coming to my classes religiously for two years. She doesn’t actually take the class though. She sits on her bike, barely pedals and literally twiddles her thumbs. I’m up there trying to be super motivating with all my “You’re on fire” cues and I get nothing from BB. I want to tell her she'd get just as good a work out sitting on her couch watching Army Wives.

Dirty Deborah: She’s the angriest woman to ever enter a group exercise class. She complains about everything from the bikes to the lights. And she just looks dirty—like her face always has brown spots on it as if she just came from working in a theater where she plays a homeless woman.

Music-hating Margaret: I used to like MHM until she told me she hated my music. Now you’re allowed to hate my music. You’re even allowed to tell me about it. But if you’re gonna dis on my tunes, give me some constructive criticism like, "I really hate techno" or "Could you play more country?" She just said, “Can you use different music?”

Me: “Yes, I have 36 different routines so what kind of music do you like?”
“I don’t know. Just something different than what you had today. I didn’t know any of the songs.”
“Well, I had rock, hip hop, techno, 80s…is there a certain genre that you like?”
“The only song I liked today was ‘Dancing with Myself.’ That’s the only one I knew.”


Since none of her feedback was helpful I completely disregarded it. For the next class I just moved onto the next routine (like I normally would). At the end of class MHM came up to me with a big thumbs up and said, “Thanks so much for the new music!” I wanted to be like, “Yeah, I went home and spent hours searching for music that you like based on the awesome feedback you gave me.” I mean, if I had done that we would have spun to 60 minutes of Billy Idol.

Old-School Bob: OSB is old as his name implies. And he calls me “Sweetheart” in the way that Humphrey Bogart says it: “Good class today, sweet-haht.” OSB likes to do his own thing too. He’s not twiddling his thumbs like BB; instead, he does his own warm-up stretches and he likes to do push-ups on his bike in the middle of class. Oh, and he hates the fact that we changed one of the 60-minute spin classes to 50/50 (30 minutes of spin and 30 minutes of weights). And he always acts like he forgot that we changed the class. We’re all getting off our bikes 30 minutes into class and he’s over there, doing push-ups and pedaling, going, “What’s going on, sweet-haht? Is it not an hour of cycle today? Can I cycle over there in the corner?”

I usually let him because it’s hard to say no to an old guy.

Please note that I have changed their names to protect the weird.

Oh, and in other spin class news: Enthusiastic Emily got engaged! And it happened after one of my classes so I feel somewhat responsible. So happy was I for EE that I resisted the urge to run over BB (at least for that day).