iFartlek...

OK...
As with all things cycling, I need look no further for inspiration than SuperDave. So needless to say when he mentioned his iFartlek training the other night on his blog it jumped to the top of my "Things to try" list.

Understand, my method was somewhat modified...for safety reasons I can't bring myself to ride on the open road with headphones. Admittedly it's arguable whether I'm actually safer because I'm more aware of my surrounding by not impeding my hearing, or just more naive for thinking that's the case...

Anyway, I digress...

My iFartlek session was done straight from itunes on my computer, in my study, while I put in some time on my rollers. Overall I liked it! I'm not a "huge" music fan but it did make the workout interesting and help the time pass. While I'm all for staying abreast of current events somehow riding rollers to Special Report w/Brit Hume on the Fox News Channel doesn't bring the workout to the same level. My one major complaint is the feeling that shuffle isn't random at all, but instead the itune gods F#cking with me. Something about riding recovery to Disease by Matchbox Twenty and then trying to push hard during an interval to Son of a son of a sailor by Jimmy Buffett just seemed real wrong. It stands to reason that this would happen from time to time, however, it seemed like a constant pattern. It was so bad I debated doing consecutive songs for interval or recovery to try and break the rhythm, but I knew this was exactly what the itune gods were trying to make me do so they could reverse the pattern and really get a good laugh. Therefore I never gave in! I just continued riding recovery to one great upbeat song after another while working hard on intervals to the likes of Simon and Garfunkel! I SHOWED THEM! :)

I'm totally new to this whole iworld but one small suggestion to the folks at Apple...it would be nice if you could flag all your songs as either upbeat or not and then on shuffle, have an option to not allow back to back play of the same "type" of song. Maybe there's no other reason for this logic but it would make the iFartlek concept a lot more appealing...

I guess the next best option is to design a playlist with alternating "types" of songs to accommodate the workout. No doubt this would work but I think the workout would lose something without the "random" unknown factor of what's coming up next.

Even with all my complaints...I Can't wait to do it again!