carpediemracing 

It's funny, I threatened to watch Boondock Saints but realized that watching movies makes time crawl if I'm psyched to ride.

I try to focus on the riding. Last night I mainly listened to music and put a muted bike clip in the background (a clip that's 3 hours long of a stage of the Tour, another clip that's 2-3 hours long of a stage of the Dauphine, some other stuff that weren't my own riding clips, and I'd skip to the better bits of the clips). I concentrated on pedal stroke, how the whole pedaling/riding action was going etc.

I'm skinnier than I was a couple months ago so I can sit lower on the bike (torso), I can pedal faster while in the drops, etc. I thought a bit about position on the bike - when I'm skinnier I can sit further back because my stomach isn't in the way, and it felt good to be in a "skinny" position for the first time since 2010. I tried to get into a rhythm then I'd check the computer to see what kind of rpm I was holding (102-103 rpm pretty consistently). I'd also put it in a big gear and check rpm while pedaling slow (53 rpm consistently).

To get better focus I'll close my eyes although last night I only did this for a few minutes at a time. On a longer ride (4-5+ hours) I sometimes ride for 20-30 minutes with my eyes closed, opening them only to get the next 4-7 minute song. Last night I only did 2-3 minute sections like that.

That makes the first couple hours go by almost automatically. I started getting tired yesterday, my legs were pretty fatigued because I did the first two hours pretty hard for me, and I tried to maintain the tempo in the third hour. I started fading hard so I stopped.

When I'm a little less psyched to ride I'll plan on watching a movie or something and that's when I have a 120w ride. Last night was 158w avg for 3 hours - to put it in perspective my lowest wattage races in 2014 were 160w, a really hard race where I can win is 180-190w (2010), and a "I can't sprint" race is 205-ish watts.