Tour of Sufferlandria Day 8 (Blender and Violator)

I took Friday as a rest day. To be honest I was pooped and my backside was grateful for the rest! Most days I gave myself a liberal schmear of DZNuts (TMI?) and that helped but it’s just not the same as not sitting on the bike!

Apply liberally!

The original plan was to crank out Blender Friday and then set the alarm for 2am Saturday morning and be one of the first to finish. It was not to be and work (the paying kind) had me up until 2am Friday morning making Friday and really long day!
So the re-planned plan was Blender before Lunch and Violator before dinner and that’s the way it went down. Blender came and went 1:43 mashing out road racing, sprints and Time Trialing to finish it (and you!) off…it turned into a game of cat and mouse on Twitter with Mike Cotty who was on our tails…with some healthy banter during the rest intervals! In case you are wondering it’s him you are riding beihind in the alps when you get a rest interval in many of the ‘fests care of footage from CycleFilm who also produced the Roads to Glory which I reviewed here.

C’mon then if you think you’re hard enough!

In reality it wasn’t so bad, a lot of it is below FTP and so you can settle in. So another 29 miles on the trainer!
For Violator it turned into a Date Night and we even got dressed up; my partner in crime (and life) TriBeccaTo was resplendent in her new Vanderkitten VIP kit and I in my ‘fest Team kit, se we settled in! 68 minutes and 64 sprints later we were done!

The quiet before the storm!

Our reward…fish and chips and a pint at the local!
With hindsight the Tour is doable fun event, out the outset it seemed a bit crazy and with our “Brady bunch” household it took a bit of planning, with the exception of two rides TriBeccaTO rode side by side for the whole event which made the hours and miles tick by and made the loneliness of a garage and trainer much more tolerable! Talking of miles, here are the stats

Of course the best stat is that the whole event raised over $50,000 for the David Phinney Parkinson Foundation, you can see more info about that here!