Life was going fairly well at my fourth session of Spin Class. I had managed to adjust the bike’s seat, so that my knees no longer nearly hit my chin.  I had managed to avoid cutting my leg and was getting by with only minor scratches.  I had managed to keep breathing and cheat death, even though I had forgotten my water bottle.  Overall, things were going pretty well.

Then I began to be taken down by a nagging tendency, I like to know who is singing a particular song. Yep, there we were sweating and one of my primary thoughts other than “Stay alive and keep peddling” is “Who sings this song?”  Usually, if I politely ask the instructor my curiosity is satisfied and I manage to avoid being too annoying for everyone else in the class.  Then came on a stumper for me, a song from my youth that I could not place, “The Safety Dance.”  Glancing up at the much younger than me instructor, I asked “Is this the ‘Pet Shop Boys’?”  I did not think it was right, but I did not think it was a horrible guess.  Looking at her iPod, she said with a shrug, “Men without Hats.”  It was that shrug.  That shrug said it all.  It said, “Who cares?  This is old people music from before I was born.”  I was an old dude and to make matters worse, it showed.

More than the struggles of my physical excursion or musical taste, my age was showing in my clothes. Not the clothes themselves, but how they were reacting to my workout.  As air whisked across a bare patch of lower back, I realized that my belly was pushing down my shorts.  Hopefully (and I stress hopefully or else I owe all of the ladies behind me in spin class a big apology), it was not causing a rare form of plumber’s butt at the gym.  Yuck.  Adding to the yuck category, I also became aware of the gathering sweat.  My gray exercise shirt was beginning to reveal the extent of my workout and portions of fabric began to darken.  This was a good sign, a sign of a good workout.  Unfortunately, the sweat was revealing the most prominent feature of my upper body.  Not a well-defined chest.  Not a chiseled six-pack of abs.  Nope, it was my belly.  The belly of a sweating middle aged dude, all wet and yucky.  Not in any way shape or form a good wet t-shirt, but rather proof.  Proof of too many seconds at the dinner table.  Proof of too many late night snacks.  Proof that more trips to the gym are needed.  Many, many more trips to the gym in my future.