Tour of Sufferlandria Day 7 (Angels and The Hunted)

A picture is worth a 1000 words right? Well here’s five! Toughest day so far by far!

Quadrathon 3.0

Time for a change, the last time I updated my blog’s feel was Decembers 2011 when it morphed from Trail and Ultra Running to Triathlon and became Quadrathon 2.0. Needless to say a lot has changed and some things have stayed the same. Last year it was somewhat neglected, life, in a good way, got in the way, but things are settling down and I am excited to pick up writing again!

2007 Quadrathon 1.0

2009 Quadrathon 1.1 (now with pictures)

2011 Quadrathon 2.0 (now with pages)

And so for now it reflects somewhat of a lifestyle rather than a specific sport although it will of course continue to be a place where I dump all my nonsensical ramblings, reviews and reports (nice use of alliteration).

As always I hope that someone take a minute to read and maybe leave a comment or just think wow maybe I can run a 5k or finish a Sprint Tri?

And you are still wondering what the hell is “Quadrathon”, check out this post!

Finally a big thank you to Mattia and Steve for their inspiration and guidance in the creation of the new header!

Friday Funny!

I may or may not be guilty of some of these….

TrainerRoad Ambassador!

As you may have noticed in the last week during the Tour of Sufferlandria I have posting screen grabs from TrainerRoad. I have been using TrainerRoad since December 2011, so I would consider myself an early adopter.

To date I have; posted 230 rides which equates to 9.1 days on my trainer! My first mention of TrainerRoad was this post here! I have transitioned from a Cyclops Magneto to Kurt Kinetic Road Machine trainer, migrated from Virtual Power to real power and added several more bikes to my stable…but remember the optimum number remains n+1!

The pain cave!

Much of my Ironman training was spent on my trainer completing Sufferfest rides as well as prescribed rides from my training plan.

All things considered I am big proponent of Trainer training, in much the same way that a treadmill can be an awesome tool. I have always been a data junkie and realize the benefit of training with Power over HR long term. So I am delighted to say that I have been selected to become a TrainerRoad Ambassador!

So what does that mean? Well expect some giveaways, insights into the system itself, tips and tricks, and of course the results! As noted in my 2014 schedule post I have a lot of cycling events this year and with a busy household full of kids and athletes working smarter over just plain harder is a fundamental strategy for success and TrainerRoad is key tool to achieve that!

There are plenty of links to TrainerRoad’s website but here are a few other places you can find them online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! 

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 6 (A Very Dark Place #AVDP)

Another evening another ‘fest…this is becoming a habit!
Rather than bore you with how hard it was and this and that, check this out, 51 minutes of riding in 16 seconds!
Tour of Sufferlandria 2014 Stage 6 AVDP (Enhanced) from Stuart (Quadrathon) on Vimeo. Another double tomorrow, a little over 2 hours on the trainer!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 5 (Extra Shot and The Wretched)

This was the first of two double days. The Sufferfest Rules require that these back-to-back rides are completed as such. TrainerRoad is a little more forgiving and state that they only have to be completed within a certain time window, but to quote someone from the FaceBook thread

“The Sufferfest folks live beneath the shadow of a giant lava-belching volcano and work for a guy named Grunter von Agony who is very good at making pain shakes. The TrainerRoad folks are named Nate and Reid and are very good at writing code. Sorry Nate & Reid, but I'm not taking any chances, and going with the Sufferfest rules on this one...”

And with that in mind I saddled up and hit play.

Extra Shot is exactly that it’s an extra 25 minutes that you can add on to a completed ride so to add this as a starter took a little warming up to as it really is out the gate and get going. That being said the time slipped by without issues. Next on the agenda was The Wretched. As with many of the ‘fests there is a storyline of a Sufferlandrian who has fallen from Local Hero to Zero. Now, faced with the final stage of the Tour de France, it is condensed into 35 minutes and includes flats, attacks, climbs, descents, and sprints.

The Sufferfest - The Wretched - Official Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Onwards to Day 6

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 4 (Hell Hath no Fury #HHNF)

And she didn’t…

It was touch and go whether this was going to happen. That 5:00am alarm came round really quick despite hitting the hay around 9pm the night before. If it hadn’t been for the Smoke Detector battery low beep emanating from one of the kids bedrooms, you know that “beep”, every 2 mins or so, loud enough to be heard, annoying enough not to be slept through. So after 10 minutes spent wrestling with a step ladder and locating a 9V battery the beep was resolved and I was fully awake! So it was rude not to get on the bike!

On the way I bumped into this guy

I reviewed this particular ‘fest in December 2011 (wow time flies!) but as a reminder it is a 75 minute ride the meat of which is 2 x 20 minutes rolling hills and attacks followed by a 3:30 time trial.

Normally this is a fun and enjoyable ride but as the fourth ‘fest in a row and the sixth in seven days my legs were not happy. I mashed through the first 20 minutes and during the rest interval dialed back my FTP by 10% to at least get some training benefit rather than just hang on to the second half of the ride! Here is the GC data. It was a good decision and I while i had to work I was able to follow the prompts!

With the time trial complete finished I took the next off ramp and exited the Pain Cave…and fell off my bike!

Riding this early means I get a fake rest day and the next time I look at my bike is Tuesday evening!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 3 (Revolver)

Day 3 was a quickie! 45 minutes of intervals, well actually 31 minutes of intervals, 16 x 1 minute interval at 135% FTP with a 1 minute rest interval, for which I was very grateful! My only strategy was to not go out too strong and ride within myself rather than fade, I managed it mostly but each interval was under powered by 10ish watts, I’ll take it! Here’s the GC Data.

Early night tonight as I want to get the next ride in before work and then I can get a fake rest day through to the end of Tuesday night when I get to have fun with these girls.

The Sufferfest - Hell Hath No Fury - Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 2 (ISLAGIATT)

Day 2 is completed . Two hours of climbing…needless to say it wasn’t pretty! As a reminder it’s four sold climbs; 15 minutes, 2x20 minutes and then 8 minutes followed by a fast ride into the finish. Things were going well until the last climb and then the wheels started to come loose. I managed to hang on through the last 20 minutes and through to the finish but was really feeling it! Pushed hard on the final sprint!

Data and some liquid refreshment for the refueling!

 

Tomorrow is Revolver, not the easiest ride but only 45 minutes

With my earlier rides this week I am going to top out over 100 bike miles and 6 hours of saddle time, a long way from where I have been in the past but for the first week of riding post crash I am happy!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 1 (Rubber Glove)

Unless you have been hiding under a rock you will know that I am big fan of The Sufferfest, so given that my plan has changed to remove IMSG it seemed only natural that I should sign up for the Tour of Sufferlandria.

Billed as The World's Toughest Indoor Cycling Tour it seemed a perfect fit. It is in fact a charity event raising money for the Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinsons. Staged over 9 days it basically involves riding one, sometimes two, Sufferfest Videos a day. The first day was Rubber Glove. I have yet to write a review of Rubber Gove but it is a FTP Test, a steady warm up over 30 minutes followed by the test which is a solid 20 minutes, suffice to say, it’s not easy!

As mentioned earlier I have moved my Stages Power Meter onto my Cervelo so this was a good chance to reset and/or reset my FTP. Here’s the output!

After a solid hour I managed to up my FTP from 203 to 205! Not much of an increase but that last time I was tested was only 3 weeks ago, two days before I crashed! Needless to say it’s not pretty!

 

This sets the stage for the rest of the week, tomorrow is ISLIGIATT, two hours of climbing!

2014 Redux…in pencil…just in case!

Some changes from what we thought back in October!

I guess this year is the year of the bike…only one repeat event TDBB, although this time the 70 mile ride which is enjoyable rather than the 100 which is just plain brutal!

So no IMSG! This year I managed to get 3 weeks more training that last year so I should actually be ready to go there by 2019!

L’Etape California is riding the last stage of the Amgen Tour of California, the route is to be announced but I expect it to be hilly!

Honeymoon, a week mountain biking in Moab, UT…should be a blast

Only one Tri this year, Vineman so that’s my summer A race followed by the 12 hours of Temecula in November…something very new! TribeccaTO can sit and watch me go by every hour as she tapers for IMAZ!

But as you can see…it’s all in pencil!

Review; Ryders Strider Photochromic sunglasses

There is a general consensus within the cycling world that “White is Pro”, white shoes, white socks, white kit, helmet and so on, I have no idea why it’s not like the Pros don’t get dirty but it’s probably more that they just reach for a new one once it comes out the washing machine that faded gray color or once you can’t scrub the road crud off any more!

So while in Big Bear last year at the Tour De Big Bear I picked up a pair of Ryders Glasses, beyond being white and Pro, they fit really nicely, customizable nose pads (that open and close) and they were Photochromic, they get darker when it gets brighter!

These are all things that a normal review would test and say yup I love them and leave it at that. Now with my recent adventures I was actually able to test some of their other features.

As I direct result of my scientific research I can confirm the following claims;

Now I posted the above picture and left a note on Ryders Facebook page thanking them, why? Well realistically their glasses saved my eyes! I have had no issues following the accident, my eyesight is no worse (or better…I wear reading glasses!) but more importantly on the day I had no grit or dust in my eyes in fact when I wandered into the ER they were still firmly on my head throughout most of the treatments and only came off when I had a CT Scan! In fact a lot of the Doctors were openly surprised that they hadn’t disintegrated…like my face!

So you would think that was the Happy Ending but there is more…the awesome folks at Ryders reached out and offered to send me a replacement pair…which they did!

So if you’re in the market for some new glasses check out their great line up and follow them on Facebook or Twitter

These glasses were purchased by me and then replaced free of charge by the good folks at Ryders Eyewear. See previous gear reviews in the tab above. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com although I cannot commit to a repeat of any of the above!

Post crash!

Two weeks post-crash and I am healing up nicely! A couple of follow ups scheduled for the next couple of weeks and I should be signed off. I still need to look at replacing the broken parts on the bike and I am rethinking the schedule…which was only in pencil anyways! There are a couple of other things that are taking priority financially rather than the potential $1000 it’s going to cost!

Onwards!

Getting cranky!

Since my Slice is off the road I have decided to move the Stages Power meter to my Cervelo, it only makes sense seeing as this is the rideable bike! I also fitted some new tires as I was having issues with one, I love this bike and I am so glad (relatively speaking) that the crash was on the Slice!

I should be in some position to get back on by this weekend!

So that happened!

Yeah I got married! So freaking happy that words fail me! I have married my soul mate, my best friend, my training partner! It is nothing but pure awesome!

 

Starting the Year with a Bang!

Well more like a crash…

I’ll spare you all the details but the elevator pitch is, I was riding in the aero position, hit a pothole at around 25mph, wobbled a bit and slowed down and then flipped over the handlebars and hit the road with my face.

Nothing broken on me, lots of road rash; arms, hands, one knee and one shoulder. TriBeccaTo called the EMT and they checked me out and then I went to ER to get cleaned up and patched up. Lots of X-rays and even a CT scan but was given the all clear. I have a referral to a Plastic Surgeon this week to check out my nose which took the brunt of the fall.

Minimal damage to the bike! A snapped of shifter, and scratched brake hood, some minor paint scratches, the biggest thing is a scratch to my 3T aero base bar which is carbon fiber so I am looking at how to repair it and not replace it…that’s the most expensive thing to replace.

Here are some photos. If you’re not keen on the sight of blood you can skip this!

FTP Test

More like a OMFG test

Based on The Sufferfest Rubber Glove test:

Rubber Glove:The Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

I went out a bit too hard and then settled in, previously my FTP using TrainerRoad was 256 which I was always dubious about, at the end it was recalculated to 203! That’s better!

Here are the Garmin stats!

I got the power!

I ordered this a month ago and it finally arrived! A Stages Power meter, yeah it’s a total luxury but if I want to hit my lofty 70.3 goal I need some help and out!

I am kinda looking forward to resetting my FTP later this week! Kinda in a bad way of course?