Mr. Burgler(sic), Music on the trainer? I have given this some thought:

In the 1990’s and 2000’s I burned hundreds of thousands kilojoules on the trainer, mostly watching DVD’s of classic cycling races. The Tour is not exempt from the law of diminishing marginal utility, and semi-classics like Ghent Welvegem much less so. The 11th viewing is just not exciting. Moreover, the fact that all those races were full of dudes who got kicked out of the sport made the screenings increasingly less escapist. For my money, the 2004 Vuelta is the most egregious example of what a charade that sport was. If you have nothing else to do check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/...Vuelta_a_Espa%C3%B1a, and then wiki the riders on the Final GC. It’s a who’s who of frauds, freaks, cheats, and hilarity. It is the race where Tyler Hamilton was caught using somebody else’s blood to win the time trial, and then later famously, ill-advisedly, and startlingly, claimed the allogenic blood came from his in-utero vanishing twin. A WWE villain would not even make that assertion. I would give anything to see cctv of the conversation where somebody put that idea into his head. Keep in mind that T.H. is supposed to be smart for a pro cyclist.

Gradually I gave up watching bike races and started watching various acclaimed TV series, but failing to notice vital dialogue due to barfing up a lung at 180bpm is frustrating. It made me feel like I missed out on the show. If somebody coughs in Season 2 of “The Wire”, there might be a mysterious Baltimorean Respiratory Tract Virus in Season 4, westside only. You got to pay attention to that shit or you don’t get to appreciate it. That show is authentic art and deserves attentiveness. Likewise, you could be in the middle a 5-minute interval and miss the fact that Don Draper is Dick Whitman, which would make the ensuing flashbacks of his orphan upbringing confusing, and when you are trying to ride hard, confusion does not help. “Louie” or "The Sopranos" will steal 10 watts, they are very enjoyable from the couch but way too weird on the trainer.

The decision to dumb down my watching was not a conscious one. People said the remake of “Battlestar Galalctica” was brilliant. It is not, and that is why I enjoyed it so much. I watched all five seasons. Besides how hot all the women*, Cylon and human alike, were, I could not really discuss it intelligently with an actual fan. Don’t worry about spoilers, I barely know what happened. There were a few more gateway series like “Friday Night Lights” and “The OC”, shows that do not quite meet the definition of terrible, but are not certainly worth my actual time. By 2011, the switch to only bad TV series was compete, and my enthusiasm for the trainer climbed sharply. Shows that would make me feel like a complete loser if I wasted actual time watching them are perfect for the trainer. One winter I was into the show called “Scandal”. I think an African American fixer/vixen has an affair with the President of the United Sates, who as a fighter pilot had shot down a passenger jet killing 329 people because he was ordered to do so by the aforementioned fixer’s father, Joe Morton, aka the “Brother from Another Planet”, who if you squint you can see the embarrassment on his face when he delivers his extended soliloquies regarding why he murders people as the commander of a secret government death squad in order to save the “Republic”, all the while using the curious cover of a ... Paleontologist? The pained expressions on his face appear so real because he is probably thinking about how he used to deservedly work with John Sayles, and now he has this. He should not feel bad, we all gotta work and it beats lifting heavy boxes in the sun. The fact that I am not sure if all that aforementioned “plot” is accurate is what actually makes me feel better. If I gave the show my full attention then the baseline disgust I instinctively feel for myself, which is substantial but not measurable, would at least double. I know that to be true from experience because I started watching “Madame Secretary” on the trainer. It stars Tea Leoni, boob-job and all, as the Secretary of State (of the United States!). Core work is important so I figured I could do some planks and burpees watching this fictionalized and severely spruced up version of Madeline Albright save the world episode after episode. Disappointingly, I started to finish episodes just lying there with my weak core on the bedroom floor. After doing that a couple times the only PED I needed was Prozac. The year I did Kona I planned on watching all 118 episodes of “Hawaii Five O”. I figured the synergy there was worth at least as many watts as: http://www.speedplay.com/...action=home.zeroaero. I had to take a break after 1 ½ seasons though because the little person’s hair was so distracting, not to mention they had not yet addressed his shortness, and that was the only interesting thing going on really. He is shorter than his female partner, who is Asian for Christ’s sake, and who incidentally is one of the many previously mentioned hot women from “Battlestar Galactica”, where she played a Cylon(robot) named Boomer who did not know she was a robot and when she found out she was a robot she still hated the robots and loved humans, even though the robots were at war with the humans- I think. My daughters still calls their dumps “boomers”, but that is neither here nor there. I did some heat acclimation rides before Kona though and genuinely looked forward to revisiting the little person and his hair then. I have watched all episodes of all seasons of “Veronica Mars”, “Revenge” and “Alphas”. I watched almost a whole season of “Royal Pains”. The shame should bleed over into regular life, it truly should, but it doesn’t. If you want to see how much of your life you and your kids are wasting, look at your history on Netflix. It is hard to believe until you see it there on the screen in front of you, and it is depressing as shit, but if you were on the trainer for all of it, the humiliation is mitigated. Correspondingly, when Netflix suggests shows, I feel like they must think I am a total idiot, but when Spotify suggest bands they nail it. It is not the algorithm, it is me.

So to answer you question--> after tons of experimentation, I found that pushing pause on the Netflix and blasting some Rock and Roll for intervals gives upwards of a 5% wattage bump (that is more than a http://tririg.com/store.php?c=sigma). Not just any music will do though, if you have a bottle of medicine you do not chug the whole thing, you dose it. My benchmark wko on the trainer is 3x20min and I have developed the perfect playlist for it. Tastes in music obviously vary, but pay assiduous attention to the template if not the songs below, it is 100% gold and took me years to finalize. Just stick in your own picks.

If you are honest about your FTP and have not delusionally determined it by looking at your max 20-minute normalized power when your PM was not calibrated and then casually claimed that number on Facebook, forums, and conversation whenever vaguely appropriate, the first 20-minute interval is not too cumbersome. I leave my crappy tv show on and just get the first one done.

You only got a 2x20 to do now and the first few minutes of 2x20 is about finding your groove and not exploding yourself, so pick a song that has more roll than rock. Perhaps most important is to understand that it’s a rookie move to start off with killer Rock and Roll. Save it, you don’t want to blow your wad 4 minutes in, you are going to need that wad later and you only have one wad. I use “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MG’s, or “I’d Rather Be with You” by Bootsy Collins. Anything off “What’s Going On” will work. You do not need anything more. Just resist, use the rhythm, and daydream.

If you are 16 years old, you will want to give in to natural impulses and play “Ace of Spades” or “Kick out the Jams” by the MC5, but you will be done with the whole thing injudiciously. Got to save it soldier. You still need to ease into the effort, 20 minutes of staying power is the least allowable amount to have and be able to still call yourself a man. I use “Prizefighter” by Eels, or maybe Ronnie Lane’s cover of “You Never Can Tell”. Discretion is the better part of valor for minutes 4-8.

At eight minutes into the interval you still have to be careful, if you play “Communication Breakdown”, you have no chance of making it to 20 minutes as that song immediately boosts your wattage by 10% (that is more than any of the heap of pills, potions, and profit making contraptions available at: https://greenfieldfitnesssystems.com/...ategory/supplements/. Everybody has a right to hustle up a living, and if dumb-asses want to waste their money on snake-oil there is no sin in BG taking it, but it sure seems like a low blow for BG to be stealing a mama goat’s colostrum, getting it into a pill, and duping tri-geeks into paying through the nose for it, I mean come on man). If you play the ace to early, you will be laying limply there beside your bike, prematurely useless, a feeling that might ring some bells from before you started doing IM’s and had the actual libido and testosterone required to bust it prematurely. In my twenties I would still rub one out if I suspected I was having sex later that day. Now I can cover 140.6 faster, but have to save up spunk for 72 hours just to be certain I can finish. I swear the vasectomy contributed as well, but I can’t prove it, and had I known that I would be practicing abstinence anyway after we were done having kids I would not have bothered getting my nuts sliced open and vas deferens snipped. I tried to ride too soon after the procedure and ended up with an infected scrotum that looked like Granny Smith apple with my poor little Irish pecker laying on top of it. I wore my wife’s panties for a month just to keep it from sloshing around. Anyway, it is time to start rocking, just not too much. “Electric Sweat” by The Mooney Suzuki or “Thirty Days in the Hole” by Humble Pie work for me. Mid-tempo rockers like “Tumbling Dice” or “Revolution” get the job done.

Again, if Miley Cyrus or Norah Jones get your juices flowing, as they do for as they might for some ST lurkers, by all means indulge. Nobody is judging. The 2x20 playlist is about challenging yourself, but without judgment. Like yoga instructors say while they themselves proudly demonstrate http://www.comicvine.com/plastic-man/4005-6270/ -like qualities, it is really all about you and where you are, not others. Conversely, if you have even thought about Nickelback or Creed at this point, stop reading, as there exists a base level at which judgment is inevitable and appropriate and helpful. I had a 35-year-old African American woman working for me who was by all accounts normal, except she loved terrible music. She went to see Nickelback in concert. I asked how many black people were in the theater and she said, “There was six of us.” That is six more than at most Ironmans I guess. I did La Ruta de Los Conquistadores and there was one black guy in the race, and the crowds would chant “El Unico!” when he came by, and he would then give a fist pump and they would go ape-shit. I rode next to him for hours at first just to verify I was witnessing what I was witnessing, and then once it was clear that he enjoyed it, to enjoy it myself. Next time you are feeling sorry for yourself because you have a little tendonitis or some other first world "problem", look up La Ruta and the one-armed badass who gives it a go every year.

Minutes 12-16 are crucial and mentally the hardest to endure. It is here that your wattage can drop if you are not careful. Don’t save the best for last, you need the power of Rock and Roll now. Play your ace. The aforementioned “Ace of Spades” works, “Sonic Reducer” and “God Save the Queen” work. Personally, I have to admit to using some cheese here, “Dream Police”, “Surrender” and “Dirty Deeds” supply a kick that I feel in my loins. Not unlike the bad tv, I wouldn’t in a million years sit down with headphones and listen to a Cheap Trick or ACDC album, well maybe I would, but a normal person shouldn’t.

Oh Shit, you got 4 minutes to go, just kicked it out with your top song and now you don’t know how you are going to finish. What you need is some song that does not make you think, that evokes no memory of adolescence or possible introspection, one that you only use for emergency purposes, and is seriously heavy. Don’t put your favorite song here, no baggage allowed. Use the song you last heard on a car radio which compelled you involuntarily crank it and forget how much you suck for a few minutes. Think hard and if you can remember exactly where you were when it happened that is a good sign. You cannot listen to this song anytime but the last few minutes of a 20-minute interval, when you think you could conceivably vomit and your HR is 181, that is when you need it. Unless you are already certain about this one, let me suggest “Immigrant Song”, “Paranoid”, “Search and Destroy”, “Teenage Lobotomy” or “New Rose”. If you are feeling lucky, you can switch genres for the swan song. What I am about to suggest is a big gamble, but we all have a rap or country song we dig. If you have not lately heard “Hey Ya”, “Bring the Noise”, or “Copperhead Road” or “I’m so Lonesome I could Cry” or "Fist City" you can roll the dice and try it. Personally I think it’s a Judas move against the Gods of Rock who have gotten you this far, but that might be why it works the Gods of Rock do not reward nor demand loyalty. They don't give a crap about you as they have important things to do like keeping Keith Richards alive and getting The Replacements together again.

Again, the names are fluid but the stencil is solid. You just have to think about what will work for you. There was a lot of failure on the highway to the brilliance above. Block off several hours with I-tunes, Spotify, or if you are the kind of cheap SOB who steals from artists go ahead and use youtube-mps.org. I don’t want to be but I am that kind the kind of SOB who steals from artists. Find a quiet place, tell any loved ones who asks what you are up to that you are up to “very important business” and to leave you he hell alone for a while because whatever they want is inconsequential compared to compiling your 2x20 playlist.

*I cannot offer data to back this up, but Sci-Fi shows have more scantily clad women that non Sci-Fi shows. I am not counting "The Expanse", that is the exception that proves the rule.

tldr

Yes, Im old

Particularly Fragile?

Following this playlist - needed some new electro to my workout collection. We definitely have similar taste