Come Fly with Me

After 15 years I recently said “Buh bye” to my gym. No more sweating on elliptical machines next to people scrolling through their Facebook posts on cellphones. There’s a new playground in town.

Flywheel Sports is, at heart, a spinning class, something I’ve been doing for years at my old gym, but this one has something else: competition.

What makes Flywheel unique is the TorqBoard, a large screen posted in class where you can measure your performance against others. Of course you can opt out of having your name listed, but for me that’s the whole point. Seeing “90SQFT” (my spin name) move up the TorqBoard is just what the doctor ordered.

I no longer wake up thinking “I have to workout today.” Instead I think something I haven’t thought in decades: Game Day. An hour before class I get that same tingly feeling in my stomach I got in high school before a big match. I can’t eat. I can’t sit still. I love every second of it. And when I enter the spin room, I look at my fellow riders, sizing up the competition like I’m about to challenge them to an actual race. But the 47 other spinners in class aren’t my adversaries, not really. The one real opponent is myself. Sure, I want to see my name in first place when class ends, but I’m striving to do better than I did in the previous class. Flywheel pushes me. It pushes me to work harder than I’ve ever done in my life. And I was captain of three varsity high school teams and briefly played two Division I college sports.

Thirty years later however, I’m digging deeper, finding that resolve, and pushing my legs to the limit. It’s now about believing I can still do it. I gotta say, sweating never felt so good.