I WAS DECKED OUT IN EXERCISE GEAR, with a towel and a smart water bottle in hand. Fearful, I hopped on the bike wearing hideously clunky, orange Peloton shoes specialized to lock into the bike, and adjusted my feet into the pedals until a loud click sounded. They fastened me in, making it difficult to escape early — an option that sounded appealing as soon as I got on. There were a total of 45 minutes to finish. At 39:08 minutes to go, I checked the clock and felt helplessly tied down to a healthy lifestyle that so many Palo Altans gloat to have mastered.

Spinning classes have become very popular in this past year. The appeal is clear: It’s fun, upbeat, exciting and for people of all exercise capabilities, the classes can be consistently challenging. Additionally, through adjusting the weights and resistance — I set mine pretty low — it’s customizable, with cyclists having the ability to ride to their own rhythm and capabilities. Unfortunately, my rhythms were significantly slower than I had hoped, and my exercise capabilities were lacking.

Peloton, located next to SoulCycle at Stanford Shopping center, is an indoor cycling company that sells bikes for in-home installation.

The convenience of Peloton bikes is that they’re designed for home workouts, with live and recorded videos. Why someone would want to workout at home is beyond me, but it’s possible. Peloton has studios in New York City and Chicago, but people around the country can virtually join in.

For anyone 18 and over, Peloton pays $20 an hour for a window cyclist, and, for a minor like me, one can volunteer and take a class. I volunteered to be a physically active “mannequin,” but be warned that volunteering is excruciatingly hard. For someone wanting a bike for in-home installation, they are pricey, costing $1995 with spinning class video subscriptions at $39 a month.

Shoppers pointed at me and stood to watch for a few minutes, laughing at me with their frozen yogurt. Sometimes they even walked into the doorway to get a better look. Next door I felt judged as the cyclists getting ready for a spinning class at SoulCycle would ask how I was doing, and pitifully do a thumbs up motion because they could see my suffering via the streams of sweat running down my face.

I had never taken a spinning class prior to my publicly displayed workout. I thought that a 45-minute workout would be challenging, but nothing prepared me for the actual rigor of the class. Just a few minutes in, I was exhausted; In the middle I felt incapable of anymore physical activity. But still I pushed on, primarily because I could feel the employees judging me.

I was in the bottom of the ranks for my agility and there were times when I pushed the resilience setting notch five below the average of the class. Window cycling was harder and more embarrassing than I thought it would be, but volunteering beats paying $34 for a spinning class at SoulCycle.