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Now, for the past few months, I’ve been getting a bit bored with my cardio workouts. Even though I’ve taken up running, and am officially one week away from my first ever road race (the ScotiaBank Toronto Waterfront Marathon… I’m running the 5-k), I have found lately that my cardio sessions, which are about an hour a day, have been mundane. I know this not only from the fact that my mind begins to wander, and I am not fully ‘present’ in the workout, but also from the fact that my calorie burn and heart rate output hasn’t been as high as I would like. So for a while, I tried to vary my cardio sessions, by doing a circuit of 10 minutes of running, elliptical, and stationary bike work, but it was still a bit dull. That said, I had started to disengage a bit with what I was doing.

Then, a few weeks ago, my very dear friend Liza asked me if I wanted to try a spinning class. Spinning (or indoor cycling) is a low-intensity cardio workout done on a high-end stationary bike. I figured this would be great training, because I have set another goal of joining my friend Jonathan on the Friends for Life ride — a 5-day 600-km bike ride between Toronto and Montreal in July 2010 to raise money for people living with HIV/AIDS. The difference between a spinning class (which lasts about 50 minutes) and simply doing a ride on the bike at the gym however, is that the instructor takes you through a multi-terrain workout of sprinting, hill climbs, all-terrain rides, and interval power rides that push your body through a wide range of work and recovery periods that provide for a pretty incredible workout. As the rider, you control the intensity of your workout, but cranking up your dial — adding pace, resistance and intensity to your ride, that allows you to be fully in control of where you take your body on any given day. It’s a pretty cool experience that really forces you to be connected to what you’re doing with you body; to know your strength, your weakness, and most importantly where you can capitalize on the opportunity to push your body that little bit further and burn lots of calories. Now, add into the mix a group of about 10 or so other riders (all of whom have differing skill levels) who are all committed to challenging themselves to take their workout to the next level, and a leader who is part night club DJ, part coach, part instructor, and part beneficiary of the benefits of spinning, and you end up with a pretty cool workout.

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