HMTD2: Trainer

Last night I spent a lot of time picking out songs to make a playlist on YouTube so I could have good music and videos to watch while I rode on the trainer. MTV music just isn't cutting it. I got the playlist to 23 songs, which is longer than I'm riding right now. I will probably go back in and edit the playlist into a second one later. And I also think that I should make a Foo Fighters playlist...I'm kind of seeing that their stuff works really well for spinning–at least for me it does.

Here is what I rode to:

Brandi Carlisle: The Story  -  3:58
A favorite warm-up for me

Muse: Uprising  -  4:32
Easing into things...

Airborn Toxic Event: Sometime Around Midnight  -  5:03
This is an awesome building song. I started out spinning easy at a normal cadence, then just upped either the speed a little or the resistance during the entire song. It was pretty fun.

Queens of the Stone Age: No One Knows  -  4:18
I've never seen this video. QOTS wasn't how I had them pictured, especially the lead singer. I have to admit I love love love watching Dave Grohl drum. I just rode steady during this song, gawking at the screen.

Black Eyed Peas: I've Got A Feeling  -  4:52
I thought this song might be a little cooler to spin to than it was. It was ok. I picked up the pace during it.

MIA - Paper Planes  -  3:25
I most likely had a puzzled look on my face during this song, as I just couldn't stop looking at MIA with her blue eyeshadow and really weird 80s outfits. She still makes me think about the performance she did on some music awards show while she was pregnant... days before her due date. It was so funny seeing someone rap with a belly.

Killswitch Engage: My Curse  -  4:04
Nothing notable during this song...thing I must have just ridden with the pace upped a bit.

Foo Fighters: DOA  -  4:29
This is my benchmark song for how in/out of shape I am :)  During the chorus I stand up and run to the beat with heavy resistance. The first time I did this, I pooped out in the second one. I'm happy to say I made it through all of them this time, though I was taking it pretty easy in the middle. Ah to think about being strong again... sheesh.

System of A Down: Chop Suey  -  3:27
Love the song, but there was something really interesting about spinning to it. I think it was because the chorus is slow and melodic while the other parts of the song are the crazy fast aggressive parts. So it was almost opposite of how most songs work. Ride during the build up and then, bam, do something hard or fast when the chorus hits. Interesting.

Queens of the Stone Age: Go With the Flow  -  3:11
Just rode steady to this as a cool down of sorts since I was approaching 9:00 and had to get ready for a 10:00 meeting at Lux.

Overall it was very fun! Adding up the times it was about 41 minutes. I think I'm going to have to move songs around and play a bit before I get a really tight session in. That is a lot of work trying to pick songs: deciding if they'd work, thinking about what the song would drive you to do, trying to make a good mix of everything you want to do... more difficult than I thought it would be. I think I need more songs too. I've gone online to spin instructor sites to see if I could find any easy "set lists" out there. I haven't been able to find anything that isn't all about unknown upbeat music or mixups. License blah blah. I have 13 more I picked out that I'll try next time and see how those rate.

I hope I'm sore from this. I should be if I did it right. I was certainly breathing hard for most of it.