I am not built for hot weather, which makes me living in Valencia ironic. Brian is a tropical boy—as Nicole Krauss wrote in Forest Dark, “the boy was beautiful, as only a person raised in sunlight can be”—and he thrives in the heat. Living in Spain for two summers has made me slightly tanner and given me a higher tolerance for being sweaty. I have also accepted that even the best natural deodorant has its limits. June-October are aluminum months, no exceptions.
Like any European will tell you when confronted with American AC, Spanish people accept that sweating is just part of life. In the summer, you will be hot, which is why abanicos are so popular here. Some ways of sweating are more fun than others—for Valencians, going to the beach is part of daily life. For me, it’s running. Valencia is the perfect running city because it’s flat and the weather is usually great. You never get rained out of a training run, and in the winter, it’s usually 60-70 degrees. I ran a 5K here in January and did fine even though I was underprepared. I spent the winter training and met one of my yearly goals in April when I ran my first 10K in Zaragoza.
After that race, I took a week off from running to rest. A week turned into two, and then suddenly, it was May, it was 85 degrees, and it was too hot to run. Thanks to, uh, Franco loving Hitler, Spain has late sunsets, and a problem with the sun setting at 9:30pm is that it’s not cool enough to run outside until like 10pm. By that point, the park is closed, and I’m not exactly keen on running through the city when it’s dark. You might be thinking, “But Katharine, surely it isn’t too hot in the morning.” You’re right, but I did not move to Spain to become an early riser. Simply put, running is a winter hobby for me (though I’m getting back into the swing of it now that it’s closer to 80 degrees most days).
This meant that over the summer, I needed to find another way to keep fit, especially since I signed up to run Long Beach 5K in October with my niece, and while she will certainly kick my butt, I don’t need her to lap me. My former go-to, NuSweat, shut down in July, but that left me open to try new things with my fitness budget. I’m not the biggest fan of gyms, so I looked to see what other online options were out there.
At a friend’s recommendation, I had already bought a discounted membership with Yoga Download, and I tried to make that my primary practice for a while. I really like their classes, but I found that I don’t do well without a schedule. Without a class at a specific time, I find myself saying “I’ll work out later” all day until it’s time for bed. Before I knew it, I was going whole weeks without exercising, so I knew this wasn’t for me. But one thing I loved were their classes in Spanish, which were a great way to practice.
After searching online, the one platform where I found scheduled fitness classes in Spanish was Peloton. I never thought I’d be a Peloton girly—I was one of many who made fun of the infamous Peloton Christmas ad, and I find a lot of their instructors’ motivational schticks annoying. They’re also a mixed bag in terms of qualifications—I’ve taken more than one class where the instructor has terrible form (enough for even me to notice) or does a sequence on one side of the body and forgets to repeat it on the other side. But there are a handful I love, and that’s enough to get me moving 5-6 times a week.
I take Mariana Fernández’s yoga classes on Monday evenings and Rad Lopez’s strength and shadowboxing classes. Mariana is from Mexico, and Rad is Bronx Dominican, so I get to practice listening to different accents, one of which reminds me of home. These classes have also been building out my vocabulary, from directional words like izquierda, derecha, sube, baja (left, right, go up, go down) to body parts like la pierna, el brazo, el pie, la mano, la espalda (leg, arm, foot, hand, back) and commands like ¡sigue! and ¡aguanta! (both of which mean “keep going” or “hang in there”).
Another great thing about classes with Latine instructors are their playlists. In the US, a lot of exercise classes with Spanish-language music are basically Bad Bunny and Rosalía, and maybe you’ll get “Gasolina” and a Shakira song thrown in. Don’t get me wrong, many a Bad Bunny song has made it onto my running playlist, but hearing the same few songs over and over again gets tedious (and I am officially outing myself as a Rosalía hater—I think she is extraordinarily boring). In Mariana and Rad’s classes, I usually recognize one or two songs, and everything else is new to me, from Latine pop classics that didn’t cross over to US mainstream radio to rock en español, bachata, merengue, and Latine indie music. Whether it’s a word or a song I have to Shazam in the middle of class, I always come away learning something new, which is a nice bonus to breaking a sweat.
Song of the Month:
One new-to-me song from the past few months is “Las Flores” by Café Tacvba, a Mexican rock en español band. This song blends mariachi and ska elements into an upbeat, sunny love song, perfect driving music for the last days of summer.
Hasta Luego,
—Kata
Mariana is great!
Las Flores is exactly the song I needed today! I've had "The Goldfish Song" by Laurie Berkner stuck in my head all morning.
Running in extreme temperatures is no joke! On the opposite side of the spectrum, I had to start training for a 5K with one of my daughters earlier in 2023 and it was still below 0 (farenheight) when she started her running club. I found an affordable gym with an indoor track until it warmed up.