An Admission

Here goes: as big an admission a cyclist can make; it's like coming out of the basement, where there's a bike dutifully mounted on a trainer.

My admission: I teach a Spinning class. I do so twice a week at a place called Hot Body Fitness. Worse yet, I love it.

It happened innocently enough: for over a year Lango has been holding classes at the Java Gym behind San Leandro's Zocalo Coffeehouse, the coolest coffee hangout I know. A few months back a couple took over the Java Gym and turned it into Hot Body Fitness, offering Spinning, yoga and other fitness classes. So when I spoke with them about Lango classes, I offered up my services, telling them that I was neither trained nor certified, but that I'd been riding bikes for a long, long time, I'd been to about 300 Spinning classes and I could muster a lot of energy if dropped onto a stationary bike in front of a group of people. In the words of Ferris Bueller, "They bought it."

And it's going great. I love selecting music that I think will motivate the group and bringing a cyclist's eye for fitness and physiology to the class. Meanwhile the members -- all women plus Eric -- are friendly, hard-working and a lot of fun. I get paid a bit to work out (after the time I spend selecting music and putting the class together it's probably about $7/hour) and I've gotten to know some great people.

The only problem is that we need more people in the classes! Zack and Kyoung, the extremely friendly and ambitious entrepreneurs behind HBF, have poured a ton of time and money into improving the space and creating real value for the members, but between the economy and San Leandro being a small city, they're not seeing the response they were hoping for.

So if you happen to be reading this, come to a Spinning class at Hot Body Fitness! The first class is always free, and I bet you'll like it enough to come back.