First and Foremost, you should NEVER turn on your local country & western station prior to a either a long ride or a long training rider. If you pick up conway twitty, randy travis, garth brooks et al (even george jones ) you will be mentally 'locked' into playing back that song for the first two hours. If it's a long, slow, painful dirge then your ride will be, well, long/slow/painful.

jerry lee lewis, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable. Johnny Cash too - right pace and right attidue.

If I'm on a hill climb I break down that hill into smaller chunks. usually a road sign or a tree is a good visual to get me to that interim goal and then, visually, I move up the road and ride to the next incremental goal