I Joined ClassPass

After a shooting pain from my butt to my leg two Mondays ago made me cut my morning run short (and in effect, last longer) and limp back from the West Side Highway to my fifth-floor Alphabet City walk-up as the sun came up and the tears came down, I've had to stop running. I'm as neurotic as they come and lack of physical activity turns me into a really. pissy. person, so I've been trying to find new ways of releasing endorphins, which I know make me happy because I've seen Legally Blonde enough times to know that happy people don't kill their husbands. They just don't.

I didn't search far and did what most girls in my age bracket and life stage (and Facebook newsfeed) are doing to get their workout kicks and signed up for ClassPass. I fricken love it. I swear this is not a sponsored post (kind of wish it were though), but I am having so much fun with ClassPass. I don't have to think about my workout, I just show up at some boutique fitness studio in New York and let a spandex-clad instructor tell me what to do.

Some experiences have been better than others, on the local minimum list is when I showed up to a boxing gym at 6:53 AM only to find that it was locked and when the instructor at a spin class started playing recordings of himself giving motivational speeches (and a weird girl in the front started applauding). I hated that spin class, I really did.

I've mostly been taking spin classes, which, maybe because of the SoulCycle ethos, remind me of scary athletic girls from my past (the ones who shout "BALL BALL BALL" in your face during a lacrosse game. No. That is so unnecessary. Also, mouthguards, gross). Brief tangent but I actually saw a scary athletic girl from my past at a ClassPass class. It took me a minute but her blonde ponytail and gait that suggested a 7 minute mile could only be traced back to the hell that was soccer/lacrosse camp in 5th through 10th grades.

I feel like spin classes were The No. 1 Fitness Trend in 2012, an assumption I'm basing off my memory a girl at my summer internship that summer who would bring her own cycling shoes and furiously sign up for a FlyWheel class every morning. Maybe they've successfully transitioned from trendy to classic as more innovative offshoots (like water spinning at Aqua Studio) pop up? Some are much too fancy for me -- I couldn't figure out how to put the shoes on my feet at Peloton and had to leave a pair on the bike clips this morning at Revolve because I couldn't unclip myself (the instructor had clipped me in). My favorite so far has been at The Monster Studio in SoHo. It vaguely rallies around the theme of Lady Gaga, but I wouldn't have known that unless the ClassPass description hadn't said so. There are two giant flat screens playing music videos throughout class and the highlight is the blackout ride, when the room goes completely dark for the portion of a hilltop ride.

On a parting note, the song Sugar by Maroon 5 has played in every spin class I've taken thus far. I Really Really Really Like You played 3 times at my class this morning. TOO MUCH.