The joys of aqua biking

The whole two months I was in Fidenza this past spring I intended to find and visit the local pool. I never got around to it, but this summer, thanks mainly to the heat, I managed to get there within a few days of arriving.

This photo was stolen from the pool's web site. I don't have a drone.

This is Fidenza's open-air pool (there's a covered one I haven't located yet) and it's very lavish. It includes both a huge lap pool with a towering high dive and an expansive kiddie pools with a recently added water slide in the shape of a giant, rather poisonous-looking mushroom.

There's also a bar, of course, because there's always a bar, and the pools are surrounded by picnic areas where you can rent a lounge chair and work on your tan or eat your picnic under an umbrella to the sounds of very loud, very bouncy pop music.

Baked Italians.

The original facility, the lap pool, dates from the Mussolini era, and maybe this sort of thing is one reason some Italians still have a soft spot for fascism. The town apparently sought to dampen that kind of nostalgia by naming the pool after Renato Guatelli, a local Resistance fighter who was killed by the  "nazifascisti" in 1944.

What drew me to Piscina R. Guatelli was the prospect of aqua exercise. Back in California I'm a big fan of aqua aerobics, which consists of a variety of exercise movements--jogging, jumping jacks, crunches, and the like--done while standing in shoulder-high water or suspended in a deeper part of the pool. I attend classes two and sometimes three times a week with a group of women so amiable and entertaining that we often get together on dry land as well as in the pool.

Land-locked since early July, I was eager to get back in the water and thrilled to see that Fidenza's outdoor pool offers a range of  "fitness" (pronounced "feetness") classes, most of them things I'd never heard of before. "Power Gym," the class I watched a bit of on my first visit to the pool, is the most like my California aqua class, but much more boot-camp-ish and with much louder music. There are also "Trek" classes that use underwater treadmills, of all things; "Aqua Jumping Bar," which means god knows what, and "Bike" sessions that are spin classes held underwater. Although the pool calendar lists all these in English, the internet tells me that aqua biking, at least, was originally an Italian invention. I haven't yet found an explanation for why.

Undaunted, I paid 87 euros (about $100) for a ten-lesson subscription, plus a 15 euro membership. Like almost every other organized physical activity in Italy, lessons at Piscina R. Guatelli require a "certificate of eligibility for sports," signed by a medical doctor. I'd encountered this phenomenon during my last stay here, so I had a letter all ready, signed by my doctor in California.

But when the young man signing me up heard that the letter was in English, he demurred; he was pretty sure a certificato had to be in Italian. Thankfully Pam was there to act as my translator and fixer, and she told him she'd get one of her friends who's a doctor to countersign an Italian translation of my doctor's letter. He smiled--yes, that would work--and went ahead with signing me up. I've been back to the pool several times since then and no one has asked for my certificate. Which is a good thing, since Pam hasn't caught up with her friend the doctor yet either.

In my California pool you pay your money and join the class whether you're the only student who showed up that night or one of twenty. In Fidenza, on the other hand, advance reservations are required, since spaces are limited to 16. The first spot I managed to get into was a "bike" class, so despite misgivings--I'm not much interested in bike-riding on dry land, let alone in the water--I hurried out and bought a pair of water shoes (required for these classes) and some sunblock (the class was at one in the afternoon) and presented myself the recommended 15 minutes before the beginning of the lesson.

There were already about a dozen women in the water with their bikes. I and a couple of other newbies had to fetch bikes from near the locker room and roll them over to the pool, where the instructor--a bronze, blonde Amazon with thighs like an Olympic skater's--adjusted the seat and handle heights to our dimensions and then tossed the bikes into the water. She turned on the music, which blasted out of a nearby speaker the size of a large suitcase, and class began.

In California, aqua aerobics seems to be an activity favored by older women, but aqua biking in Fidenza clearly appeals to a much younger crowd, and no wonder. It was nonstop action and very demanding, since pedaling a bike at speed while alternately sitting, standing, or hunching over the handlebars isn't any easier when you're doing it underwater. Adding all kinds of arm movements (breast stroke, punching underwater, scooping forward and back) makes the 50-minute class even more strenuous.

Obviously I stole this photo from the internet, too. 

Worse, there's no visible clock to tell you how much longer you have to keep doing this. The fear that there might still be 40 minutes left to go pushed my heart rate up even higher.

I had to cheat some of the time, resting my legs and hoping the water was concealing the fact that I'd quit pedaling. But I consoled myself with the observation that I was older than everyone else in the class except for one woman who looked like she must, must be a few years beyond me.

Now maybe it's because we're mostly older ladies, but my California water classmates tend to go heavy on the sunblock, sunglasses, sunhats, and rashguards or jackets. And all of us wear sensible one-piece bathing suits. So I showed up to the Fidenza pool slathered in 50 sunblock and wearing dark glasses, a visor, and my serviceable tanksuit. As I headed out into the blazing sun, I was just sorry I hadn't brought a swim shirt to Italy with me.

Once I got out on the pool deck I was glad I hadn't, though, since I would have looked like even more of a freak than I already did. 

For my Italian classmates all faced the sun without any visible protection, aside from the fashionable sunglasses a few wore. No hats, no visors, and certainly no shirts. I was the only person wearing a one-piece; almost everyone else wore flirty bikinis with ruffles, glitter, and netting, several of them strapless. Even my apparent age peer was in a two-piece, with typical European disregard for American notions of what a displayable beach body looks like. 

Despite looking like they were ready for nothing more vigorous than lounging on a towel, these women were there to work, and our instructor made sure we did, barking out counts of eight and yelling "Dai, dai!" Although that common Italian exclamation sounds like "Die, die!" which I thought I might actually do as the class proceeded, in fact it's Italian for "Come on!" It literally means "Give!" which, like a lot of things in Italy, seems much sexier than the American equivalent.

Finally the class was over. My legs were rubbery as I walked back to the locker room, but I felt that rush of endorphins or dopamine or whatever is released in the aftermath of strenuous physical effort. As soon as I'd showered and dressed I went out and reserved a spot in two more classes: "Power Gym" and another round of aqua biking.

For now I'm too American to give up my one-piece, however.   

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