Tour of Sufferlandria Day 1 (Rides 1 & 2)…doing it my way!

Due to multiple conflicts I have decided to do my own variation of the Tour of Sufferlandria. With the Rock Cobbler race this weekend and more travelling in the near future rather than stress about it I decided that the easiest thing was to just do my own thing. That seemed almost inevitable as many of my events are self-imposed challenges anyway; how far, how high and so on. This is much in the same way the Everesting was an event of me against hill rather than an all-out race against other people.

So my plan was to ride doubles and triples with a view to completing it by Thursday or Friday, then have a quick taper into the Cobbler on Sunday. Something like this…

• Monday; ISLAGIATT and Revolver + Revolver 1:56/45/45 ~3:45
• Tuesday; TBTTITW and TGTTOS and The Wretched 47/1:31/49~3:00
• Wednesday; The Rookie and DAYT 54/44~1:45
• Thursday; A Very Dark Place + Nine Hammers 53/59 ~1:52
• Friday; Power Station and Violator 50/1:08 ~2:00

Of course now I have written it down this is a lot to bite off and then ride a gravel 100 miler with 8,000’ of gain on the Sunday so I think I will split things either side of the weekend. The main focus is the Cobbler so there is no need to set myself up for a miserable race or even a DNF!
The Cobbler Course was announced today and while it seems manageable (hopefully not my last famous words!) there’s no doubt that the challenge will be amplified with a couple of hundred miles on my legs and a massive amount of TSS already accumulated.

It’s actually 100 miles but the RD missed a couple of turns!

So with this said Monday is under my belt.

ISLAGIATT. You can read my review here. It’s a well-balanced session with plenty of time at and just below threshold, with countless digs well above it. The ride consists of a warm up, 4 climbs; 15 minutes 2 x 20 minutes and 8 minutes then a fast 7:30 minute run into the finish. I rode this really well, really really well in fact. I ended up improving on a My Garmin Connect record for Max Average 20 mins from 206 watts to 231 watts, my FTP is 234 watts so I was happy with that.



Revolver is Simple. Brutal. Uncomplicated. This is a workout you don’t have to think about. You just get on, drive yourself into the ground, and get off. The main event – 15x 1:00 intervals, with 1 minute rest in-between each interval, for a total of 30 minutes of intervals…and I got to do it twice. Full disclosure I did the first one I did at 100% and gave it my best shot. The next time around I rode at 90% and did likewise. No doubt I missed my targets but after ISLAGIATT in the morning my legs were best described as %$#&^(! tired!



More to follow tomorrow…