Tour of Sufferlandria Day 7 (Ride 10)

The last one…necessity was the mother of invention and using an exercise bike in a hotel gym was the way to go. I had the TrainerRoad app on my phone and could follow the prompts for the intervals.

The bike showed Watts and as such it worked. 75 minutes on an exercise bike in shorty running shorts, not ideal but you know…all it takes!

Wrapped up @thesufferfest #tourofsufferlandria today. Had to resort to @trainerroad and exercise bike combo! Not ideal but made do! 232 miles + a 90 mile gravel race thrown in the middle for good measure!! 5 weeks to Strada Rosso 110m/12,500' gain! #bike #cycling #tourofsufferlandria #ToS #trainerroad #alifebehindbars #rockcobbler #gravel #gravelgrinder

A video posted by Stuart (@quadrathon) on Feb 14, 2016 at 4:09pm PST

So this was the last ride of the Tour. This is the fourth year of completing this challenge and it may not have been the hardest but it’s never a measure of easy! It was certainly added some complexity with having to ride the Rock Cobbler mid event.

Totals for the Tour;

• 232 Miles
• 13:30 hours

Up next Strada Rosso.

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 6 (Ride 9)

The final day of the tour was another double. Power Station and Violator. Opposite ends of the spectrum if you like. 50 minutes of climbing followed by an hour of short sharp sprints.

Power Station is a new video released just this week, you can check out the trailer below. My legs were still feeling tired so I dialed this down to 85% and dug in. Some standing some sitting with rest intervals in between. No muss no fuss!

The Sufferfest: Power Station: One Minute Sample Footage from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

The basic workout is;

5:00 – Warm-up

40:00 – 11 'Walls' to climb at a low cadence. Each wall is between 30 seconds and three minutes, with variable recovery between each effort.

5:00 – Cool-down

I had planned to follow this with Violator but packing and passports were calling so I acted like an adult and got on with the necessary!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 5 (Ride 8)

Two days post Rock Cobbler including a days rest. This was another double day and involved A Very Dark Place and Nine Hammers.

AVDP is 5 x 4:00 intervals- with 3:00 rest between each interval. Each interval has its own aggressive personality:

• Solo breakaway in Paris-Nice
• Small group breakaway in Fleche-Wallone
• Joining Gilbert and the Schlecks as they attack in Liege-Bastogne-Liege
• Following Cancellara – and trying to beat him – in Paris-Roubaix
• Holding onto Wiggins and crew in the Criterium du Dauphine

This I dialed down to 80% and managed to hang onto the end.

Nine Hammers has a different but strangely similar structure. It is nine VO2 and Threshold intervals, lasting from 3 to 4.5 minutes, racing with the pros including immersive on-bike and broadcast footage from the Tours of Romandie and Switzerland.

This one was dialed down to 90%.

In the end it was just over 2 hours and 33 miles on the clock. This leaves the final day tomorrow and then Becca and I are off on vacation for 10 days!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 4 (Ride 7)

This was the last ride before coming back to complete the Tour next week post Rock Cobbler. Do As You’re Told or DAYT is an interval ride. It comprises two sets of 11 intervals each. The first set is matching intervals, with efforts matching recoveries. The second set features inverse intervals, with opposite efforts and recoveries.

I dialed it back down to 80% and went from there. No real problems with this one. Now with 164 miles on my legs this week I am on a two day taper to race day Sunday. I found this video online which cover’s Sunday’s event.

See you on the flip side!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 3 (Rides 5 & 6)

Discretion > Valor > Stupidity!

After a late night finish on Tuesday I took a rest day, well actually I took a rest 20 hours and that seemed to do the trick. I also dialed down the intensity to 80%, this was much more in line with the training level that I have had with the TrainerRoad plan to date. With both of those factors these rides were much more manageable especially when ridden back to back. I had a three enforced breaks; one between the ride due to work, one at the start of the second ride as I had loaded the wrong video and one between the second and third intervals of the second ride to put kids to bed, ‘cos you know…life!

Overall with the dial down I was probably getting closer to 90% of original goal. It’s been while since I have ridden either of these videos and that helped keep me engaged. These are both Race simulations, there is a lot of climbing on the first one and the second has a faster cadence so it was a good mix up.

One GPX file for both rides, visual created out of SportTracks

The Wretched is 35 minutes of Tour de France stage featuring flats, three major climbs, three very short descents, a valley and a rolling run in to the finish. Lots of nice sitting in and climbing. Very much in my wheelhouse.

@thesufferfest #tourofsufferlandria #thewretched no escape no surrender sit in and dig your way up that climb! #bike #cycling #alifebehindbars #thesufferfest @garmin #edge810

A video posted by Stuart (@quadrathon) on Feb 3, 2016 at 7:53pm PST

The Rookie, which lasts 55 minutes, is a race simulation too and is based on 3 x 10 minute intervals. What’s great about this video is that it has footage from the Amgen Tour of California and specifically from the Thousand Oaks finish, so I am very familiar with the on-board footage and in fact Becca and I were at the finish line that day!

The Sufferfest & Team Giant-Shimano: The Rookie: Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.
So two more finished, my plan now is to ride the next one, Do As You Are Told on Thursday and then take my foot off the gas till Race day on Sunday, recovery on Monday and then wrap things up on Tuesday and Wednesday. This is obviously developing into a big week;



Rolled 150 miles too and I am fast closing in on 1000 miles for the year!

Tour of Sufferlandria Day 2 (Rides 3 & 4)

Not the easiest of days. Tired legs and a blown up PC added to the fun. Only managed two of the targeted three Sufferfest Videos as I spent well over an hour saving data and setting up a new PC to run TrainerRoad. I didn’t get off the bike till 10:15pm, adding another 45 minutes wasn’t going to happen. Like I said yesterday, I am doing this but not at the cost of race day.

I probably should have realized that something was wrong in the morning when riding the Best Thing in the World my PC froze and I had to guess where I was! After the ride I started copying some of the videos to a newer PC and left that running while I went to work but then came home to a BIOS error. I’ll spare you all the IT woes. I don’t appear to have lost any data so all I lost was time.

TBTITW is two 13:30 minute race simulations, no surprises its all work, pain and misery. Very much the core values of The Sufferfest. This was ridden at 100%, rather than dial it down. It was a best effort but well you know!

In the evening after all the futzing about I finally got on the bike around 8:45 and rode To Get to the Otherside. I’ve ridden this once before and knew what to expect, it’s essentially an endurance ride and is much in alignment with the last 6 weeks of training that I have been doing with TrainerRoad, it has a few Tempo efforts thrown in for good measure. Due to the late hour it turned into a bit of a long slog to the other side.

So day 2 of riding and days 1 through 4 of the Tour completed

Miles and TSS are accumulating thick and fast.

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…

Tour of Sufferlandria!

The Tour of Sufferlandria, a 9 day ride across the mythical land! I finished this last Sunday and was (kinda) glad it was over! It wasn’t that it was long it was that I hadn’t looked at, yet alone sat on, my bike with any real reason since Vineman last July. So it was really no surprise that by day three I was feel tender. Cardiovascular-wise I was fine, my heart rate was well within the right zones. Even more so as I had dialed back my FTP to 75% so as to not kill myself. The biggest challenge was really simply sitting on the bike! That said after Day 5 I was feeling better and by the end of the event my backside had acclimatized nicely!

The Tour started fairly easily and then ramped up as the week went on. Each day presented a new challenge; Time Trialing, Climbing, Sprints. Every day featured at least one video, several featured more! The longest day was just over 2.5 hours and the shortest just under an hour. With some creativity each stage lasted 50 hours. Each tour day is active while it's that day anywhere in the world. It starts at 12am Kiritimati time (UTC+14) and ends at 12 midnight American Samoa time (UTC-11). This makes each tour day last 50 hours and days overlap. Local time is irrelevant. It was with that format that Becca and I were able to get the first two days completed, run the Calico 50K on Sunday and then pick up on the bike where we left off.

I rode my using TrainerRoad who, as per last year, really put on an excellent show. They had created a mini website which logged your progress, and carried a daily DNF rate, this was approx. 40% by the end of the 9 days! Additionally they had secured a myriad of prizes for anyone who completed the Tour. Tour aside if you’re riding on a Trainer you should be using TR, I am lucky enough to be Brand Ambassador for them and you can read a couple of posts about the set up etc here, here and here. It really is an excellent and super easy tool that will improve your cycling with structured training and quality feedback!

The minions over at the The Sufferfest Headquarters were again raising money for the Davis Phinney Foundation and this year managed to raise over $100,000. There were a couple of new videos included in the Tour and some old favorites too. When I get a chance I will post a review or two.

Here’s The Rookie trailer, there is plenty of on-board camera action!

The Sufferfest & Team Giant-Shimano: The Rookie: Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Overall for the 9 days I logged just over 13 hours and 213 miles (with an extra 70 minutes and 20 miles for the FTP test) and a whopping 13’ in elevation gain!

It’s been a good kick start to my cycling for the year and while I am focused on trail-running the cross training will no doubt do me good!

SOB50k Wk 13

This week was the Tour of Sufferlandria, so my running shoes were hung up in favor of my trust Cervelo. You can read more about the event in this post.

By way of making this post a little interesting, here are the trailers or sample clips for all the rides completed during the Tour, as a reminder, this was the calendar;

Day 1; Elements of Style & The Long Scream. 20 miles 1:18

Elements of Style from The Sufferfest & Cycling Tips on Vimeo.

The Long Scream from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 2; Blender. 28 miles 1:43

Blender from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 3; Fight Club. 17 miles 1:00

Fight Club from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 4; Nine Hammers. 16.7 miles 1:03

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Nine Hammers: Official Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 5; Angels. 18.4 miles 1:08

Angels 2015 from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 6; Local Hero 23.5 miles 1:25

Local Hero from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 7; The Rookie 16.4 miles 1:00

The Rookie: Sample Footage from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 8; Revolver, Violator & Half is Easy. The Rookie 41.0 miles 2:36

Revolver: Sample Clip from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Violator: Sample Clip from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Half is Easy: Sample Clip from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Day 9; ISLAGIATT 32.3 miles 1:58

ISLAGIATT: Sample Clip from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Wann have a go next year? 51 weeks to go and counting!

SOB50k Wk 12

This week was always going to be a bit odd. A pseudo taper combined with a race weekend and the Tour of Sufferlandria starting on the Friday! All these added up meant that there was going to be a 15 day block with no rest day! Here’s how it shook out;

Monday. 10 miles. It was a holiday so I didn’;t have to go out at the crack of dawn or the early evening so I went slap bang in the middle of the day. It took a good 5 miles to warm up but I actually felt pretty good at the end of it.

Tuesday. I haven’t been on my bike for months, probably 5 times since Vineman 70.3 last summer! So I thought I should do an FTP test. The result 216, down 14 points from last year…I’ll take it!

Wednesday. 7 miles. Progressive speed work, all things considered this went ok. There is life in the old dog yet!

Thursday. 5 miles. Nice and easy…aka sluggish!

Friday. Day 1 Tour of Sufferlandria Elements of Style and The Long Scream. 40 minutes working on your form followed by 40 minutes of time trialing! My ass thinks my brain has gone numb!

Saturday. Day 2 Tour of Sufferlandria. Blender. One hundred minutes of a bit of everything, climbing, time trialing, sustained effort. That was hard! Feet up for the rest of the day before tomorrow's race.

Sunday. Calico 50k. You can read the race report here.

So for the week; 4 runs 9:12 and 52.76 miles and 3 bikes 4:13 and 68.17 miles!

No news on the waitlist for SOB so I may be running the Bandit 50k instead!?!

2015 Plans…redux (probably not for the first time either)!

Had you asked me 18 days ago what my plans were for the first 8 months of the year were and I would have said this;

• Calico Ghost Town 50k
• Tour of Sufferlandria
• Sean O’Brien 50k
• Leona Divide 50m
• Grand Canyon R2R2R
• TransRockiesRun Run 6

Then this happened;

Then this happened;

So now it’s kinda like this...sorta...ish!

• Calico Ghost Town 50k – Registered
• Tour of Sufferlandria – Registered
• Sean O’Brien 50k…well maybe, we’re waitlisted
• Bandit 50k – depends on the above!
• Leona Divide 50m - Registered
• Grand Canyon R2R2R – not enough time for Becca to recover before IM Boulder, no worries, it’s been there a few years and I am sure it will be there for a few more!
• TransRockiesRun Run 6 – looked at the finances on this one and it costed out at $7,000+, and the house needs painting and the closets need remodeling, and I need (don’t want, but need) a new car…being an adult sucks!

Remaining possibilities;

• Cuyamaca 100k Registration opens June 15th…yeah I set a reminder for that!
• Waldo 100k It’s a lottery which announces the run list on March 1st
• Backbone Trail 70 miler (self supported) There’s something to be said for being in control of you own destiny! I have run the entire thing but in sections; here, here and here.

The elevations South to North (approx 15,000’ of gain)

And…we’ll see!

It’s all good!

SOB50K Week 11

Another build week! I was finally feeling like I was getting back into the groove at work which meant things at home are easier. Along with 100+ mile daily commute 3-4 days a week our combined family has four kids that need lunches and school runs etc. Having had nearly 2 weeks off over Christmas meant that I was a little rusty!

Monday. 10 Miles. Becca’s plan has longer back-to-back runs. This was hard, it sucked for the first 5 miles. The next 5 miles I was pissed so I just ran it off to get home and eat!

Tuesday. Off. Doing my happy dance!

Wednesday. 4 Miles. Treadmill, nothing fancy just a recovery run.

Thursday. 10 miles. Went out, warmed up and then picked up the pace and didn’t look back. 7:44 pace for the run which isn’t “blazing” fast compared to say my Half Marathon PR which is a minute a mile faster but hey I will take it!

Friday. 8 miles on the Treadmill. 3% incline at 8:57 with last mile at 1% at 9:15

Saturday. Off. Like. A. Boss!

Sunday. 22 Miles. My race plans have taken a hit…more on that to follow. So we tried something very new as the weather forecast was for it to be somewhat hot. We drove through to Topanga State Park which is closer to the Ocean and should be cooler with the plan to run two loops around the XTerra 15K course and then add on some more

Long story short, we got ourselves onto the Backbone Trail and ended up at the southern end of it at Will Rogers State Park. All that said it was a section of the trail that Becca had never seen and I section I had only run once back in 2009. It also sowed the seed for something for later in the year.

We had the pleasure of bumping it a friend of our Louis who was out with his pals tearing up the trails. I decided to do my best Beaker impression!

As per last week we were using real food although we ran a little short as some was left in the car with a view to picking it up for the second loop. That all said it was a good day out and while there was a fair bit of uphill walking I felt pretty good the entire run!

The new plan seems to mean bigger mileage so this week I ended up just under 55 miles and I am already over 130 miles for the month!

This coming weekend we have the Calico 50k AND the Tour of Sufferlandria starts, it’s going to be a couple of tough weeks!

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!

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!

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!