So begins one of my favorite tweets about the disastrous (for Peloton) commercial from Xmas 2019:
It’s that commercial people reference when I admit that I got a Peloton for the holiday. Of course, my husband did not buy it for me. Rather, I convinced him that we needed not only to spend the cash on the bike, but also to subsequently create space for it in our small Brooklyn apartment:
Project roadmap from my Best Self planner
Still, I feel like unjustifiably self-indulgent for just having this thing. Part of that is that the bike is the only luxury product I’ve ever bought. My clothes are bought on sale. We drive a Honda Civic. I fly coach and use miles like they’re the new green stamps. I meal plan so we don’t have to spend money on takeout or waste food. Even my road bike is a Craiglist purchase. The Peleton bike is an insanely expensive toy when juxtaposed with our generally non-luxury lifestyle. It’s also a lot of money that isn’t going to better works: money that I am not donating to charities or even saving for my own retirement. It’s money I could have donated to actually help people.
This is, of course, part of my own hangup over making a good salary when millions of Americans do not. Paul reminded me that I earned the money for this bike. I don’t disagree, but I also feel it’s unfair that I was able to earn this money when thousands of people work just as hard as I do, at equally challenging jobs, and do not receive the same compensation. If I am fortunate enough to be making money that I do not need to survive as part of my job at a media agency, should I not be contributing more of that money to help people and sharing my good fortune with the world?
Despite this line of thought, my altruism was short lived. I realized that I loved the bike as soon as I got it. The instructors are cheerful and encouraging. My favorite is the woman who is now a professional cyclist because she was told her thighs were too thick for ballet or modeling, who talks about her professional cycling career, emphasizes results over body size, and shares enough of my GenXer taste in music to make all my workouts joyful. Even with other instructors though, the workouts are always a dance party on a bike, because I can preview the playlists to make sure I will have fun. Some people may be riding the Power Zone Endurance Rides; I am riding the “90s Pop Ride”. When “I Love Rock And Roll” played in the last few minutes of today’s 80’s ride, I breathlessly tried to yell along while pushing up a hill at a high cadence, watching my heart rate spike up to 92% of max, joyful to be pushing myself up that freaking hill.
There’s also a gaming element to the Peloton software that isn’t unlike the SoulCycle model in the leaderboard competitive model. I generally ride in the top 40% of riders; the top 30% of women my age. I am also constantly trying to beat my own PRs, to output more energy than I did the time before. The rides also have suggested resistance and cadence added in the on-demand versions, so I can clock whether I’m where I need to be for metrics. The whole thing appeals to the data nerd part of me and the competitive instincts in me. It’s hard to resist that design.
Finally, I just like biking. Biking is what I apparently built my body for as a teenager, and now that’s just literally how I roll. I am a better athlete on a bike than I am without wheels: as a runner, I run very slowly, as a cyclist, I’m actually average. It’s joyful, to me, to feel my body, the body I have always been told isn’t fit, isn’t capable, roll up an imaginary hill faster than I did the day before. My body is fit and is perfectly capable of cranking out these rides, and I love being able doing so without leaving the house or worrying about being late to a spin studio. I still feel somewhat guilty for even having this bike, but for the joy it brings me, it’s worth every penny I paid for it.
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