The One Where I Took My 100th Cycling Class & Celebrated Pretty Hard

Friday, March 22, 2019


You know that thing I'd been working on for, like, a year? That thing that, 99 rides ago, seemed beyond impossible? Well, I did it.

I hit 100 rides at my spinning studio, Harness Cycle.

When I took my first class last April - an introductory class, just 30 minutes long - I felt... pretty terrible about myself. The class seemed impossible, & my body seemed broken, & I was just so mortified by my inability to keep up.

Why did I want to stick with it? God, I have no idea. I cried in that first class, & I cried after it. I blogged about it, ending that first post with, "I have 10 classes to use up by June, after all. I have to do something - & I guess, for now, it might as well be this, right?"

So I went back. And then I went back again. And then I went back 97 more times - until I hit my 100th class last Friday.

There are days I still cry on the bike - not because it's hard but because it's emotional, because it makes me feel things, because the instructors say thing that hit me right in the gut, in the best way possible.

And no, I still can’t always keep up. I am by no means in shape or an athlete, & some days I still feel like I can’t do a damn thing well enough to be there. But I show up. I walk through the door & ride even when I don't feel like it, even when I'm not very good at it, even when my knee hurts or my lungs burn or I'm sweating so hard I can barely see straight.

Three wonderful friends rode with me for my 100th, & one of my favorite instructors, who is such a badass, played some of my favorite songs, from Lizzo to the Backstreet Boys to Alanis Morissette to Bonnie Tyler (that's ride, we rode to "Total Eclipse of the Heart"). We rode & danced & laughed & cheered & could barely breathe at the end, & damn, was it ever fun. Afterward, my friend Marisa & I went across the street to Saucy Brew Works, where we ate my favorite pizza & drank beer & caught up... & then, when I got home, Mike had three cupcakes with "100" candles waiting for me.




I am so grateful to everyone who supported me & cheered me on & sent me DMs or left me comments or showed me any kind of love on my road to 100. I know this is the kind of thing that other people - athletes - do all the time, & I am under no illusions that I am somehow special for doing it. But this is huge for me; this has changed everything for me. I am a better person, a growing person, a stronger person both mentally & physically. And I just so proud of myself for it.

I'm now at 102 classes, & while I won't keep up a public count anymore (for now!), I have no plans to stop cycling any time soon.

Thanks for everything, Harness. Let's keep ridin'.

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