Tour De Dork

I haven't been doing much exercising and, like everyone else, have decided to turn things around for the new year.

On Wednesday night I noticed that the local gym was having a cycling promotion and thought that would be right down my alley. You have to ride the exercise bike at the gym varying distances, three times a week for 6 weeks. No problem.

They also accumulated your time over each of the "stages" and had a prize for the fastest riders. Even better !

Except....week 1 is from the 25th to the 31st, which gave me two days to get the first three rides in....AND the gym closes at 1 pm on New Year's Eve.

Undeterred I figured that I could ride two courses last night and one course this morning at 6 am.

I got to the gym last night with about 1 hour before close and looking at about 45 minutes of ride time. The first course was only 3.5 miles in distance so rather than waste time on a warm-up, I figured I'd get right into it. When I was fit ( and younger) I could hold 300+watts for an hour, so I'd just do this first course at 275 watts, a modest pace, get through the first course as a good warm-up and then really light it on first for the second ride.

I sat down, hit start and started pounding away at 275 watts. " Hmmmm, something must be stuck", I thought and looked around. No, nothing was stuck. Apparently in the couple of years that I've stopped riding seriously, 275 watts has become difficult.

Undeterred I pressed on holding 275 watts and watched my heart rate go up 155....165.....172.....173..... the last mile I was up out of the saddle grunting and dumping waves of sweat on the poor old man out on a leisurely ride on the bike next to me.

Finally I stopped the clock at 9:40 and lay slumped over the bike, making a spectacle of myself, and doing my best to not throw up all over the gym floor.

Before I could start the next course I had to find someone to take dowm my time. After some searching I finally found the guy who works there spotting someone, " Hey can you give me hand ?"

" Can you wait until after I'm done spotting this guy ?", he asked.

" I really can't", I said, " I have to do another ride and I just need you for a second, I"m sorry."

So the guy stopped what he was doing and followed me back to my bike, " What seems to be the problem ?" he asked.

" There's no problem.", I said, "I just need you to record my time so I can do course number two."

" Huh ?", he looked at me funny

" For the Tour De Gym...my time....I want to ride a second course, can you please record my time ?", A pool of sweat was, literally, forming around me and I was still panting.

He raised his eyebrows, sort of smiled, and raised a finger. " Hang on", he said, and walked into the back room.

He came back with a three ring binder and asked, " THIS Tour De Gym ?" he asked pointing at the cover of the book which read TOUR DE GYM.

" Yeah, EXACTLY !" What was this guys problem ?

" THIS Tour De Gym ?", he asked a second time, except this time, with a big smile on this face, he was pointing at the bottom part of the cover which read....

starts JANUARY 25, 2010.

" Yeah ", I said, " exactly."