I must be living in an alternate universe. Although The Model was challenging and hard, it was not that bad, even at 100%
I think half the battle in a workout such as this is your mental attitude. I did the Focus Exercise before I got on the trainer, and on the trainer, I did a short admission of gratitude for what I am not going through right now, before I started pedaling. I try to focus only on the interval I am on now. The vast majority of the time, I only had to focus on my form and breathing, or just experiencing the video. It was only on the last set of intervals that I had to use some positive self-talk to get me through.
This was one of the few videos where the action was actually motivating.
I may sound like a broken record by now, but I really think The Elements of Style helps in workouts such as this one. I have done it seven times now, and the improvements in form seem to help me generate more power, more comfortably. I also try to smile during hard intervals, and remember the breathing exercise from the end of Recharger.
Since beauty, art, and philosophy were included in the intro, I will cite one of my favorite quotes from Nietzsche:
“…just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely, in terms of leaves, twigs, color and form; it is so very much easier for us simply to improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience, and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its “inventors”. All this means: from time immemorial we are – accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows.”