Panic on the Peleton…
I’m not great with wasps.
I’m better than I was as a kid, but I would still like to put as much distance as possible between me and things that sting.
Put it this way, if I had a choice between sitting in a beer garden full of wasps with Johnny Depp and a mega-pint of wine, or having a diet coke at the bar with Amber Heard, I’d probably end up sadly sipping my soda indoors, staring longingly over her shoulder at Johnny being all cool with the spikey-arsed swarm.
Because you know he would be.
Anyway, one morning this summer I was pedalling away on my Peleton bike in my gym and I suddenly realised there was a wasp buzzing around my head. I tried to remain cool for a second hoping it would get bored and bugger off, but it came right up next to my nose and my instinct was to waft it away with my towel.
I know, I know! Not the right thing to do.
I made the little shit angry and it did the whole “I’m going to fly back and forth at you like I’m on a piece of elastic” thing.
I couldn’t help myself - I wanted to get off the bike as quickly as possible, but the thing is the Peleton bike comes with proper cycling shoes that clip onto the pedals.
I’ve never used clippy shoes on an outdoor bike because I’ve always had visions of pulling up to traffic lights and not being able to click out in time and keeling over like a fainting goat, but I’ve never had fears of anything untoward happening on an indoor bike.
How wrong could I be?
Under normal, calm circumstances exiting the Peleton isn’t an issue. I clip off my right shoe, step off to the left hand side of the bike and unclip the left.
Easy.
Except for some reason when I was panicking I unclipped my left shoe first and jumped off to the left leaving my right foot trapped in the right pedal, so I was stuck there waving the towel around my head in a frantic rotary action trying defend myself from the wasp who at this point had gone full psycho.
“Fuck Off! Just Fuck offfffffff!” I panted, still breathless from the sprint I was in the middle of before it started messing with me.
There was no way I could clip out of the right shoe without getting back on the saddle again, and I tried to do it without fully clipping into the left pedal again, but the left shoe slipped straight off the pedal when I put weight on it, leaving me narrowly avoiding a trip to the gynaecologist.
In a microsecond, I realised it was better to leave the left foot unclipped and exit the bike to the right, but because I wasn’t used to getting off on the right hand side I couldn’t seem to coordinate my legs and I flailed off in a sweaty heap, just managing to twist off my right foot before my knee dislocated.
The wasp was still on elastic and getting more irate with every rotation of my towel, but I managed to get to the door, fling it open and guide it out with one final swoosh.
(I didn’t want to kill it, even though it obviously wanted to murder me!)
Anyway, the coaching lesson of this ridiculous story is when you’re stressed the parts of your brain responsible for logical thinking don’t work as well as they normally do.
That’s what I tell all my clients if they are having a meltdown.
The thing to do is to slow everything down, gather your wits and don’t take further action until the stress hormones are flushed from your system, because you’re likely to do some dumb shit if you stay in a state of internal mayhem.
There are many ways to get yourself back to a state of calm again.
Exercise can help, as can doing some work on your breathing. Often, talking your problems through with someone can help you feel better, or simply taking yourself somewhere quiet to write down what’s bothering you and make a plan for next steps will help settle you.
If you stay battling away at a problem in a state of stress, you’ll end up like me on a wasp ride from hell.
Next time that happens, at the first sign of a wasp I won’t try to waft it away, I’ll unclip right, exit left, unclip left, open the door, wave wasp through it, then continue my ride.
Well, that’s the plan anyway!
Now it’s time for you to make yours…