Recently, in a gesture of surrender towards the Texas summer, I began using my building’s Peloton. I own shoes with clips, most of my weight’s in my lower body, I’m used to watching the Marlins while working out—it all made sense. I even tried classes (abandoning the Marlins), and I liked them. The competitive aspect was fun. I enjoyed trying to be good but not too-good. I also enjoyed doing something that was a lot of fun for people two years ago but was now getting old, like how it felt to join Instagram in 2015.
Then, I discovered you can just use the thing like a normal exercise bike. They have this “more rides” button at the bottom of the screen, and one of the options is “just ride,” or some words like those. So, I’ve been “just riding.” The Marlins are back on, baby.
Of course, this is a waste of money. There’s no point in paying for a Peloton subscription if you’re going to use it like a normal exercise bike. But that’s the thing: I’m not directly paying for the subscription. I’m paying rent, the building is using my rent to pay for the subscription, but it’s not like they have another bike (besides one of those weird old-person bikes where you’re basically sitting in an armchair and just wiggling your feet a little bit), and realistically, I don’t think the Peloton subscription is altering my rent.
There is a risk involved. I could get attached. The maintenance guy here is a big fan of doing the absolute minimum in the moment (it once took three trips for him to flip our air conditioning unit circuit breaker), and I feel like Pelotons have specific maintenance requirements, so if the thing breaks—like the seat-height-adjuster already has (thankfully, it’s at a good height for me)—I’m sunk. But hey, maybe by then it’ll be cool enough to run outside again between 11:00 AM and 8:00 PM, my theoretical window for doing things that aren’t blogging.
In the meantime, it’s nice to see the quiet fury of those others in the gym who love spin class (and through their own rent are paying for me to attend virtual spin class) watching me steadily pedal on while Avisaíl García bats on my phone. It’s like I found a shortcut. And that shortcut is still leaving me part of the #QuadSquad.
Finally someone says it! The Peloton is incredibly over-hyped.