Music To Spin To

Morning Edition no more! There is so much written about what to engage your ears and eyes while spinning on the trainer, and this no shortage of product to fill this supposed need. Spinervals gets lots of hype, and while I suppose it would be kind of cool to fantasize about competing in a race and watch the road while analyzing your PowerTap data, I disagree with the assertion that Spinerval DVDs are "a must for indoor training." All I care about is developing tasty music mixes to make the minutes fly by.

No techno for me, thank you. NPR's Morning Edition was a real drag to work out to, so this is my first attempt at a workout mix. Real standouts on this mix are Bowie, Gang of Four, Labh Janjua & Panjabi MC, and Old 97's. It's not all about tempo, but it seems to be important to alternate driving up-tempo tunes like Doreen with slower, quieter songs like Clem Snide's The Sound of German Hip-Hop. All in all, this is a pretty good workout mix, though I need to really experiment and change things up. Today was the first time that I trained for more than 35 minutes...I made it to almost 1 hour and 1,000 calories, and the music really made a difference.

I don't want to entirely abandon the notion of watching video while working out, and I even shot video of my favorite climbs, thinking that I'd make videos to watch while working out, but it seems to me that the audio element is far more important than the visual.

Suggestions for workout distractions are welcome!