A nice little spin on the cycle trainer tonight.  No screen caps since my Garmin is (as usual) being tempermental about uploading and transferring to Garmin Connect.  Spinning on the cycle trainer is approximately 500 times more boring and mind-numbing than running on a treadmill or swimming laps.  It is absolutely critical to maintaining good mental health (not to mention for being able to stay on long enough to achieve a fitness objective) to have some form of entertainment to get you through.

TV series on Netflix or DVD are great.  Right now I don’t have any of those but what I do have and really enjoy are audio books.  I’ve always been a fan of audio books for my long runs or rides when I’m training alone.  Same on the trainer.  I use the Audible app on my iPhone and a pair of bluetooth headphones so I don’t have to deal with cables.  Plus it means that I can put my phone on a table or something and not have to put it anywhere near my grotesquely sweaty body.

So far I’ve almost always just done boring steady state riding on my trainer.  Occasionally, I will do some kind of interval riding (warm-up, 2 min hard, 5 min recovery, repeat 4 or 5 times, etc.) but nothing intelligently designed or structured.  Just messing about.   I actually own a cycling trainer DVD (no idea where it came from) but it’s still in the cellophane.  One of these days soon I’m going to pull it out and give it a whirl.  I’d like to introduce some variety in my cycling workouts and milk a little more fitness value out of them than just basic cardio and calorie burning.