Review; The Sufferfest Angels

I am a bit behind in my reviews of the Sufferfest cycling trainer videos and with#5 coming out next month I thought it was a least time to review #4; Angels.

In case you have been living under a rock or you’re not into cycling the Sufferfest are downloadable 1 hour-ish long videos of real cycling footage with a kick ass soundtrack and a punishing schedule of intervals of one sort or another. Angels is not different!

With footage from Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Dauphine Liber as well as an ascent of the legendary Alpe d'Huez the ride is a structured series of intervals. Here’s my ride from SportTracks;

As with the other videos there are visual and sound prompts for what to do when…which usually involves pedaling harder or faster or both! Along with little sound bites designed to prompt you to “get your ass in gear”! It’s a pretty simple premise but the effect is amazing, the POV; Point of View footage is directly licensed from the UCI and drops you right in the mix. The sound track is a mix of alternative rock and dance and the scenery as you can imagine is breathtaking!

Specifically the workout is the following, from their website:

*6:30 warm-up, featuring footage from track racing in San Diego

*10:00 of over/under intervals, with 1:00 just above your threshold, and 1:00 just below threshold, repeated 5x. Featuring footage from the 2009 Paris-Nice when Alberto Contador got, gasp, dropped by just about everyone!

*3:00 rest, featuring some beautiful descending footage from cyclefilm.com, effort level 4/10.

*8:00 climbing, while you try to stay with Andy Schleck in the 2009 Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Effort level starts at about 7/10, attacks take you up near 9/10, until setting down to 7/10 for most of the rest.

*4:00 rest with more descending, effort level 4/10.

*8:00 climbing, with a gradually increasing pace up the famous Col d’Eze in the 2010 Paris-Nice, featuring Vockler, Contador, Sanchez…yeah, all the big boys. You do the first two minutes at 6/10, next two at 7/10, next two at 8/10 and the last two at 8.5/10. There are a few accelerations in the group that ask you to increase cadence without increasing effort….which can be a little tricky, as you’ll find out.

*4:00 rest with more descending, effort 4/10.

*8:00 climbing, with the freaking mother of all climbs: Alpe d’Huez…can you stay with Contador in the 2010 Dauphine-Libere? You start the climb bridging up to the break with an effort level of 8/10. Then you pretty much do 8/10 the whole way up. Oh, wait, I forgot about the bajillion attacks that push you so far into the red that you’d swear your eyes are bleeding.

*4:00 warm down featuring a sort of motley arrangement of things to keep you entertained. Including the first Sufferfest xtranormal video. Oh boy.

So should you get it it? Hell yeah, $11 will get the keys to the kingdom and you can play it over and over!

Here’s a teaser!

Check out Angels and the other Sufferfest videos here….if you dare!

This product was purchased. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com.