Podcasts? Audio books? Real books? Are you a weirdo who puts an Ironman flag on the wall and you stare at it for 4 hours as motivation? (I know someone who used to do that).
I have the TR plan on my phone next to my iPad where I watch shows or movies. So far I have done:
all the marvel movies. I looked up how to watch them in chronological order, instead of release date
Star Wars movies + mandolorian
F1 Drive to Survive series
currently watching Westworld
It’s nice if you can find a long series because you don’t have to think about picking out something to watch. Just fire it up and press play.
FWIW. I watch series.
LOTS of anime and other older series. If its a longer than 90 minute ride, I usually put a movie. I hate to pause and resume movies later.
I have a dumb trainer, so its hard to concentrate on anything else other than hitting power numbers. I have music playing, which changes with the workout style. High intensity threshold is techno and high bpm music. Low intensity is is 90s-2000s pop.
Tempo or easier: Movies with a plot
Sweet spot: Skate or snowboard videos where I can pay attention off and on to the visuals, or just listen to the soundtrack
Above sweet Spot: Just music. Visuals are annoying for me at this intensity.
My GF and I have been watching Battlestar Galactica (2000’s version) together, her first time through, probably my 10th. Literally the only time we watch TV. On the rare occasion I train solo, I watch Youtube videos of various sorts (Throttle House, watching some Mayday: Air Crash Investigations, Drachinifel WWII naval history, Plainly Difficult, etc).
Similar to Sean, my entertainment depends on the workout intensity. Lately, I’ve been putting on Not Another D&D Podcast while Zwifting, but usually I do one of the below.
Ramp test: Either the Hades OST or the album The World You Want To See by Glacier Veins (picked it at the start of the season and have stuck with it each time. Probs will change for next season)
Endurance: Anything that will make me laugh because endurance is so damn boring. Often this is just College Humor or Smosh videos on Youtube.
Tempo and Sweet Spot: AACC or in some cases, race footage.
Above Sweet Spot: AACC or in the cases where I get sensory overload, nothing at all. Sounds counter intuitive, but if there’s too much noise when I’m in the hurtbox, I cannot focus on the work.
That was the first series I watch on a trainer back in 2012 (dumb trainer).
I never finished it, before they removed from Amazon (I was 3 episodes short_.
I finally and regrettably finished it last year… what a bad ending.
My reward for training in the basement = Youtube time! Lots of catching up to my subscriptions and typically some back and forth with some music videos if I need some motivation.
Also… you know what’s hard? Balling your eyes out because of X factor golden buzzer while being asked to put down 120-150% FTP. Just sayin’.
Lol ramp test I don’t watch anything. I have a playlist that I made for a 10k that gets me through. First few songs are pretty relaxed and just get me rolling, and by the end the intensity is ramped up to push me harder.
Lol just google “how to watch marvel movies in order”.
I had watched them all out of order the first time. Not even by release date. I would watch some later ones and think they were pretty good, then go back and watch other older ones, so the plot line was all out of whack. I didn’t even know AntMan or Guardians were Marvel properties
Oh, there’s nothing to watch for me either. Just music playing, and sometimes I mute or pause it in the final three minutes because I get sensory overload and can’t focus with the music playing.
The best shows I’ve watched on the bike over the last year:
Peaky Blinders
Punisher
Breaking Bad
The Boys
Ted Lasso
Love Death and Robots
Stranger Things
Altered Carbon
Black Mirror
Watchmen
The Flight Attendant
Mare of Eastown
Lovecraft Country
Raised by Wolves
I definitely enjoy boxsets, so Game of Thrones or The Wire. I tend to find I need the subtitles for some of the quieter dialogue.
I also enjoy the SW or Marvel movies. Something escapey/fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, but some recentish scifi films like Source Code or Edge of Tomorrow. I have thought about Star Trek episodes but I think they’d be too short to match up with workouts?
What I also enjoy is putting on the commentary, Director or actors or whoever, to get another side to films I know really well. I certainly was astonished by a particular scene (that I won’t spoil) where apparently whilst the actors appear to be talking face to face, were actually filmed a few months apart and the two actors never met on set for this scene and did their scenes solo with another person being the back of their head. Or when a director explained about how an ending was originally going to be very different but got rewritten. Weird for me because I thought that story could only ever go that way.
Anyway, that’s probably just an excuse for me to watch a film I’ve watched loads of times before.
I am just waiting for someone to invent the ‘device’ that reinserts all the deleted scenes into the correct place in the film, rather than just having a whole bunch of them as extras. Surely that can’t be too difficult an option?
I just started watching Medical Police on Netflix. For me it’s perfect for trainer rides because it’s nothing more than a silly comedy series that doesn’t require much thought.
