don't ride for the shoutout

This is a story about my deep love for the Peloton bike. 

And also about how truly ridiculous I am capable of being. 

A little bit of backstory: like a few hundred thousand other people, the Peloton was a pandemic purchase for me. But it wasn’t just that. I was 38 weeks pregnant with my sixth baby, Bray, and I had gained a good bit more weight with his pregnancy than any of my others. Like almost double, if you’re wondering. So, sitting on the couch one day, with an achy back and throbbing lady parts, in a moment of I can’t wait to not feel this way anymore I texted my husband at work and told him I think we needed a Peloton. We could use our tax return. I supported my argument by reminding him that we once paid for a YMCA membership that cost around $100 a month for the whole family, and we went roughly one to two times a month. If each 30-minutes on the elliptical cost us $50 then really, the Peloton would be a steal compared to that. He texted back with a thumbs up and before my temporary momentum left me, I ordered the bike. I knew if I thought too much about it, I’d get tired again and DoorDash a Carmel Macchiato to my porch instead. 

Like I said, hundreds of thousands of other people were also ordering their bikes, so we were going to have to wait six to eight weeks for it to arrive, but like I also said, I was 38 weeks pregnant so that felt just about perfect to me. I would have a baby and a few weeks later my get back in shape savior would arrive at our doorstep.

It didn’t totally work out that way. The bike did arrive, and I did of course use it the first day, and it was the hardest twenty minutes of my life. Taking spin classes a decade ago does not prepare you to just hop on a bike again. Plus I didn’t know that a gel bike seat cover would have been a great help and I paid for those twenty minutes down below for days. It was another week or so before I got back on.

I was hit or miss on the bike the first few months. I would try for twice a week, but then I would accidentally go ten days or so without riding. I started mentally calculating the price of each workout with the monthly membership fee I was paying and while it wasn’t the YMCA membership we weren’t using expensive, it was enough to make me feel silly for not riding more. By the Fall of 2021, I was seven months postpartum and needed to stop making excuses for that extra pregnancy weight that was still hanging around, so I started making riding a priority. 

In December, life got really hard, and the bike became the place I went to work some of that pain out. 

That’s another story I would love to tell you sometime, but what I am telling you here is that Peloton keeps track of everything you do: every ride, every output, every personal record. And I started to get addicted to the metrics. They were like my own personal performance reviews: you’re amazing at this Katie, look how much you are improving! You bring so much to this team, Katie, we’re lucky to have you show up on this bike. 

Of course that’s not what they were saying. The truth is the bike was cheaper than therapy and I need a S&%$-ton of therapy, so I rode a lot. 50 rides. 100 rides. 150 rides. I ate up every milestone, giddy like a little girl getting a trophy in front of her parents.

Around mid-May of this year, I looked ahead and realized that if I could finish approximately 32 rides in two weeks, I could get my 200th ride on my 37th birthday. This probably only makes sense if you’ve ever taken a Peloton class, because you know that the instructors take a little time each class to give a shout out to people who are taking the class live that have milestones, like getting to 50 rides or having a birthday. 

Welllll. What do you know, I could potentially have TWO milestones in one day and if that wasn’t going to earn a public shoutout, what would?

I turned into somewhat of a crazy person for the last two weeks in May. 32 rides in 14 days. I got up early and stayed up late and sometimes did three or four rides after the kids went to bed. They weren’t all super long or super hard, but I wanted a shoutout and I was going to get it, so I did what I needed to do to add those rides up. 

The day before my birthday, a Saturday, I took my 199th ride, which tee’d me up perfectly for the 5:00am 30-minute 2010’s Hip Hop class on Sunday morning. That night, Alex took me to my favorite restaurant where I diligently ordered a salad because “I’ve got a big ride in the morning. I’m getting a shoutout.” [insert smug face]. I didn’t have any pizza, lest I feel sluggish in the morning.

Around midnight, something Alex ate turned his stomach over and he rushed to the toilet. He ended up being fine after that, but I have this thing in my old age where I cannot fall back asleep easily once I am woken up. I tossed and turned until around 3:00am, or that was the last time I remember seeing the clock, because I was doing that thing you do when you know you have to wake up early and instead you stress about missing your wake up call so just never really get any rest. At 4:40am, the alarm went off and I felt dead. Absolutely no way I could do a bike ride in 20 minutes. 

BUT YOU ARE GOING TO GET A SHOUTOUT, KATIE! I told myself. You’ve literally been killing yourself to get to this moment. Don’t miss it. Kendall Toole’s class is waiting. I dragged myself to the bike.

Friends, I’m sure Kendall is a lovely person, but she doesn’t care about a stranger’s 200th ride on her 37th birthday. I rode every single one of those 30 minutes waiting for her to tell me I’m doing a good job, and the shoutout never came. 

To add insult to injury, I had told a handful of friends my plan, even invited them to join me on the bike, but I keep company with people who have far more sense than I do and a 4:40am wake up was not in their game plan. But, they did text to ask enthusiastically, “Did you get your shoutout, friend?!” and four or five times I had to say “Sure didn’t.” I was moderately bummed all day.

I’d like you to know that my temporary loss of sense has returned. I don’t do more than one ride a day anymore in order to gain one sentence of approval from someone who can only see my profile name. And, I’m working real hard on not caring so much about the metrics but the other day I went on a ride and THE OUTPUT WASN’T WORKING. I did a whole ride and at the end it said “0”. ZERO. I mildly panicked that people might see that and think I quit the ride or something and then I remember absolutely no one on earth cares. No one. 

I don’t think I need to tell you the lesson here, but I will: Don’t ride for the shoutout. It may never come (plus there is the whole bit in Matthew 6 about not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing and I don’t know if that could be any more clear - the shoutouts aren’t supposed to come). Chasing the applause of others is going to let you down eventually. And then you just look really silly and end up incredibly tired all day and regret not eating the pizza to celebrate your 37th birthday.