Date: 2/3/22
Training Day: 60
Miles: 0

How It Felt: Frustrating. Annoying. Irritating.

Commentary: When I woke up at 4:15am I was actually excited about my spin bike ride. The iFit coach I like, Yuri Hauswald, is super energetic and charismatic. Like most iFit coaches, he rattles off interesting facts and history of the area we’re “riding” in. But he has this contagious enthusiasm for cycling that lifts my mood and makes me smile throughout the ride.

Part of me thinks it’s weird to be excited about an indoor bike ride with a coach I’ll never meet who, to me anyway, only exists in my tiny phone screen. But I was still excited this morning. I felt like the upcoming ride was going to be just what I needed to start my day off right.

I was so fucking wrong.

Yuri didn’t fail me – iFit did. I climbed on the bike, paired my phone with it, and started the workout. A few seconds in I got the annoying screen saying the Bluetooth was disconnected. Usually it goes away in a few seconds. This time it didn’t. And it’s not like it wasn’t connected. When the warmup started the bike resistance increased, so clearly my phone and the iFit app were talking to my bike.

After two minutes I closed out iFit. I was frustrated and cursing as I reopened iFit tried again. Same thing. My temper tantrum escalated and tears welled up in my eyes. I tried again. Same thing. At this point I hit the full blown, little kid temper tantrum stage.

Like a child, I flung myself off my bike, cutting my leg in the process. I took my spin shoes and heart rate monitor off and chucked them across the room. I sat on the floor, crying and cursing. The only thing missing from my child-like tantrum was flailing my arms and legs around. Then I restarted my phone and tried again. Same thing.

Could I have done a manual ride? Of course! But that’s not what I was looking forward to this morning. A manual ride is merely a workout. My ride this morning was supposed to be more than that. It was supposed to be an uplifting experience where Yuri cheered me, made me smile, and I climbed off the bike feeling good physically and mentally. So, I gave up.

I started a chat with iFit support to see if they could help me fix the problem. I attempted to walk on the treadmill, but of course as soon as I started walking the support people started chatting with me. After a frustrating exchange with support, their ultimate solution was to uninstall iFit from my phone, restart my phone, and reinstall iFit.

While this pathetic solution did seem to fix the problem, I still get the “Bluetooth Disconnected” screen every few seconds, but only for a flash. I think I shall install iFit on my husband’s tablet and see if it behaves any better.

Basically I woke up at 4:15am to get pissed off and start off my day in a horrible mood. I was bitter about wasting my time, time I could have spent sleeping, or walking on my treadmill, or sleeping. For a hot minute I regretted not buying a bike with a built-in screen, until I looked up prices. Then I came to the conclusion that this iFit Bluetooth frustration is worth not spending $1,300 on a bike with a screen. My bike was $350. Suddenly my mood was better, and I moved on with day.

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