28 January 2008

The Trainer TV

Today I finally resorted to riding the trainer for a workout. It's been nearly nine months since the last trainer workout, so it was a strange experience.

Why did I do it? I don't like the wind outside.

It should be noted that I'm a freak (or mentally disturbed...actually that's probably a bit more accurate). I can withstand 4+ hour trainer rides. How? The proper entertainment.

Everyone has their own ideas about the proper trainer entertainment. I've tried most things. I've tried reading to increase academic productivity, but mainly that just ends up with decreasing the performance of both my workout and my academic comprehension of the material. I've tried cycling DVDs, but mainly that just reinforces my true belief that I'm exponentially less of a badass cyclist compared to the European pros. I've tried non-cycling sports DVDs or shows (skiing, football, baseball, car racing), but mainly that just reiterates how completely non-badass of an athlete I am outside of cycling (and even my claim to badassedness in cycling is quite small as the previous sentence demonstrated).

What does work? For me, any sort of television or DVD entertainment that requires no active thinking but has a consistent, progressing, even predictable plot. The proven ones for me include:

-Law and Order (I still don't remember the different versions of the shows or the characters, but the plot is always about the same and with it goes a good hour block of training)
-Sesame Street (another good hour block of training with a little educational material)
-Sabrina the Teenage Witch (because she's hot)
-The Price is Right (because he's hot)
-Local news in Providence (again see the importance of predictability...Gene Valicenti makes the time go past the best)
-Curb Your Enthusiasm (this is not for hard intervals, though, because I usually laugh a lot and that can cause asthma attacks)

If I'm exiled to the trainer some more in the following months (as I surely will on Tuesdays and Thursdays at approximately oh-dark-hundred in the morning), I'm hoping to try new things. Anything. It's unfortunate that there's only a finite number of reruns that one can choose from, but at least there's always Gene Valicenti. But he's only on for about thirty minutes.

No comments: