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Lately, I’ve been feeling off. Leading up to the Holy Half, I injured my ankle and couldn’t run. I was stagnant for most of Spring Break, and now with only a few weeks left until the half,* I had no idea how to keep training without running. That is, until a friend told me about beat biking. I had done it before back home and really liked it. It kind of reminded me of a nightclub for women in their late ‘30s: loud music and cute workout outfits in a dimly lit room. *[Editor’s note: See "The Holy Half Might Be My Favourite Day at Notre Dame" for a detailed recount of Vittoria’s race experience.]

Nevertheless, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I got a fitness pass for the Duncan gym and signed up before my 9:30 a.m. class. Of course, this meant going to the 7 a.m. class to then make it back to Ryan and be on time for class.

The hardest part of the whole ordeal was getting up at 6:30 a.m. to get to class on time and groggily making my way to Duncan.

The second hardest part was setting up the bike. You have to push the seat down with both hands (I learned that the hard way) and grab a set of weights before sitting down and starting to pedal. The instructor says, ‘We are rolling!’ and from that point on, it’s in their hands.

It always starts deceptively easy.

The instructor calls for resistance, and suddenly the bike feels heavier under your legs, like the road has tilted upward without warning. You’re still seated, but your body leans forward instinctively, your hands gripping tighter. Around you, you can hear the room shift — the sound of synchronized effort, the soft change in breathing, the collective realization that this isn’t just a warm-up anymore.

Then comes the first sprint.

Out of the saddle. Fast legs. Music louder now, almost insistently so. There’s no real room to overthink it because if you do, you fall behind the beat. And the beat is everything. It dictates when you push, when you recover and when you hold back just enough to survive the next push.

What surprised me most wasn’t the intensity; it was the structure. It wasn’t chaos, it was controlled intervals disguised as rhythm. Climb, recover. Sprint, reset. Repeat. The class moves like that, almost like it’s pulling you through a sequence you don’t have to design for yourself.

The instructor is part coach, part DJ, part motivator who somehow knows exactly when the room is slipping and when to push it further. There are moments where they call out “add two more turns” or “last push, don’t quit yet,” and you realize you’re doing more than you thought you could a minute ago.

Somewhere near the end of the session, there’s an arms workout.

It looks simple on paper: curls, presses, small controlled movements in time with the beat. But after everything that comes before it, your arms feel strangely disconnected, like they’re borrowing energy that’s already been spent from the rest of your body. You lift on the beat, lower on the beat, trying to keep your movements clean even as your shoulders start to burn in a different, quieter way.

There’s something almost funny about it; my legs are begging for a break, my lungs are steady but tired and now my arms are being asked to finish the job with the same consistency as if nothing else had happened before it.

Then, before I knew it, I had four songs left … suddenly I’m done and cooling down and completely missed it, all before 8 a.m. I have never quite understood what it meant to be ready to attack the day before I did 7 a.m. beat biking. Walking out into the morning air, still slightly out of breath, my legs feel like jelly, but I feel oddly steady, like I’ve already done something hard before the rest of the world has even started the day.