The Longevity of Peloton.
Post pandemic Peloton is still a thing. I’m not over it. We may not be making banana bread or writing our novels but some of us are still using our Peloton for the simple power of positive thinking. For those of us who were doubly privileged enough to stay home and reevalutate our lives during lockdown and do so with a Peloton bike and app in our midst, it was a winning combination.
I’ll speak from my own experience: Peloton changed my life. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about an app or an exercise program, but I know I’m not alone. Yes, Peloton has lost a bit of its shine now that the pandemic zeitgeist that saw everyone and their mom ordering one is over. Long over. The company has weathered intense customer service, production and delivery issues. It changed CEOs. It went from lavish NYC company parties to gathering its instructor in-studio. But the story of Peloton and what it means to avid users like me transcends all of the glitz, glamour, and momentary popularity. You see, Peloton retains and fosters the development of two things most businesses lack these days: human connectiion and an inherent belief in yourself that you can do it.
What “it” is varies. Many Peloton fans use the bike/app for fitness, to lose weight, to get healthy, whatever all of those things mean to you. That’s how my wife and I started. In February 2020, we presciently ordered a Peloton and as parents of two small kids, we fell in love with the convienience of being able to bust out a quick and effective work out from our multiuse home office room. When lockdown happened, we used the Peloton to maintain our sanity and believe we could navigate those three months at home where we, like all parents, were forced to find ways to work from home, keep making money, provide some modicum of thoughtful childcare, administer and monitor online school (I’ll never forget how counterintuitive online kindergarten felt), and somehow make it all fun. A fun game we were all playing filled with chalk art on the sidewalks, big gardens in our backyard, making surfboards and wings and all the things we could imagine but not actually do out of cardboard and tape and glitter. All the family walks we took, tracing every street in our neighborhood, memorizing every fountain, flower and fence, grateful for neightbors who had benches for reseting and those who kept up the books in their little libraries.
When we started to lose both of our businesses, I cried on the Peloton. I rode the bike knowing we were going to lay off our whole team. I rode the bike when everything felt completely unfair. I rode the bike when all of our clients had to leave, one by one, in a slow but fast procession because they were all restaurants, wineries, and food businsses who were shut down and losing money just as fast as we were. I rode the bike in the morning, all those mornings where I woke up feeling like I was getting punched in the face, over and over. I rode the bike because beyond my wife and my family it was the most stable thing there at the time. The instructors were still there. They believed I could do it. I understood it was their job to say that but it never felt fake or disingenous, certainly not then and even now. I still didn’t know what “it” was. But the Peloton never let me down, and unlike work, it didn’t let me go.
During a socially-distanced trip to the beach that summer a friend told me how he used the Peloton app and did the runs out on the road with the class playing in his airpods. This was an idea that would further change my life. I had been running off and on most of my adult life; a stint in high school cross country made me understand how good (and bad) long distance running can feel. I took it up again in earnest during this time, telling myself I was running away from the death. The news was filled with death and body counts. Those early months of the pandemic, it’s hard to remember how filled with death they were, the cognitive dissonance we have to have to get through it. But I remmber the feeling of running, where I could be free for a 30 minute class with just Robin Arzón in my ears telling me I can do it. Yes you can. Just when you think you can’t. You have friends who secretly or not-so-secretly have their instructor - their favorite, the one they’ve developed a parasocial relationship with where they just get you, even though they don’t know you. We’re still part of a more subtle Peloton club. We don’t advertise anymore. But when we get in conversation and it slips out that someone does Peloton, the list of our instructors, favorite rides/runs, all come spilling out quickly. We follow them through their own marriages, babies and milestones. And yes, we’re part of some weird cult. But is it a cult? We’re part of a group who shares an interest in working out, but also for some of us, we share an interest in becoming better humans. That’s what Peloton has ulitmately given me - enough belief in myself that I know how to make myself a better human.
The runs got longer. I would stack running classes one after the other, I tried the marathon training, and I made my own ever-evolving running playlist. As I got stronger, I’d start most runs with a 30 minute class as my warm up (Warm up?! The workout has become the work out!) and then use my playlist from there. The playlist reflected my own musical tastes which I was rediscovering. I was less afraid to choose cheesy pop or Britney Spears because I heard it on Peloton playlists. I felt less alone in my love of 90s music because in targeting Gen X through Gen Z, there were a plethora of classes with all of this loaded and ready for us on the app. I bought into the in-group mentality and motivation and distanced myself from the business parts as they sold me merch, optimized the heck out of their app, and added and deleted new features. Some of it was great and some of it was gross but that’s life on a real ife + digital platform, right?
The drinking started to get in the way of my running. I’d worked in food and beverage for 20 years and enjoyed the best alcohol has to offer. But my relaitonship with it had become more and more complicated. During those summer months of 2020 it become like a job. I was scared, everything waas changing, our businesses were failing and we were trying to keep two small kids, and ourselves, alive. Drinking at five o’clock, or earlier some days if I’m honest, was a way out of that for a few hours. It tamped down the choking anxiety, where I felt like my heart had grabbed a hold of my throat. It made us fun parents. That’s what what we thought. That’s why we did it. Until I realized I could run longer, faster, harder without it. I thought maybe I’d try. I had quit drinking twice when we were pregnant with both kids so it was not out of the realm for me. I didn’t have a problem, this wasn’t rock bottom. We have so many misconceptions about our individual relatinoships to alcohol. But I had seen the devstation alcohol had wraught on people close to me and I didn’t want that. I knew in my heart that someday I would quit, and the pandemic brought that day much closer.
By Christmas 2020 I’d had my last drink. A nice glass of red that I knew was the last one. At least for a while I told myself. With a brain that knew no in-between, no off switch, and that struggles with moderation (and would later be diagnosed with ADHD) I had an inkling that once I turned it off I might not be turning it back on. That was four years ago and it’s still off. To celebrate New Year’s Eve, my wife and I each did a Peloton ride just before midnight to usher in 2021. Yes, it’s corny! But it’s one of those Peloton traditions that offers you an alternative and a community. We were still digital only back then, so you’d log on and ride with thousands of people from around the world, with an instructor live teaching the ride. It was an incredible feeling, giving virtual high fives to people you didn’t know but could still connect with in that undefined, overwhelming, lonely time.
Over the last few years since, as the world plodded slowly into whatever it is we’re in now, our post-pandemic reality or whatever, I’ve maintained my Peloton routine through the ups and owns of life, vacations and sickness, cross country moves and more. I’ve run four half marathons, I’ve been in the best shape of my life. But that matters a lot less to me than Peloton inspiring me to believe I could go back to graduate school at age 44 and get my master’s degree. Inspiring me to believe I could change careers and the course of my life, and that of my family. To beleive we didn’t have to do anything just because we’d done it that way before. That we could let go of the past and try something new. Robin Arzón is my instructor for when I want to light the fire of self-belief, self-compassion and just generally bad assery. She is always there for me, she is always present, she is always ready to conquer the next challenge. So then so am I. Andy Speer is my instructor for when I want to run and chill and feel good and smile and listen to stories about a Honda Prelude in Connecticut growing up, which mirrors a lot of my childhood and teen years. I could go on. I, like many, have an instructor for how I feel or want to feel each day. For the vibe I’m trying to catch, or just to get through the workout because I know, after so many years, that if I get the Peloton workout done I will always feel better. I’m not done yet.
