Just wanted to pass on a tip I have discovered after almost 300 TR rides to pass the time on the bike doing sweet spot and tempo intervals. Combine music with reading rather than watching videos.
I was previously watching cycling races or other sport such as football / basketball on a big screen positioned in front of my bike and playing uptempo music through Airpods. This helped to pass the time for longer intervals. But every now and then, the video I was watching made me want to look up something on the web eg stats on a cyclist. So I would go onto Safari on my iPhone and look it up and I found that I became absorbed in looking up the information - so much so that the interval had almost finished by the time I was focused back on the ride. I have to stress that this works only for a smart trainer on erg mode which takes out all of the effort that would otherwise be involved in holding on to a particular power target.
Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me - what if I became engrossed in a book instead of watching a video? This led me to download an app on to my Apple TV that allows me to view PDF’s. I then uploaded a book in PDF to the app and bingo - the book appears on the big screen TV. Just have to press the Apple remote each time I want to turn a page. I tried this while riding Palisade and read the first 20 pages of Catch 22 and the time absolutely flew. I am hanging out for the next ride to keep reading the next 20 pages.
I should say that I am not a book worm. I have rarely read books for pleasure. But this seems to really work. Probably wouldn’t be that useful reading a hard copy book but reading onscreen via a big TV works well.
Not sure if anyone else has had a similar experience. But if you have a set up where you can broadcast text onto a screen, I reckon it would be worth checking it out. I would be interested to know if I am the odd one out or if this works for others. Cheers