Review; The Sufferfest Chrysalis

Chrysalis is a departure from the usual Sufferfest format. It’s a workout specifically aimed at Triathletes and is based around a series of “Bricks” bike/run intervals with narrow transition time in between.

You still get the awesome footage that we have all come to love and hate but now you get footage of running, all of the race footage comes from Challenge Roth, one of nine of the Challenge-Family races and most likely the most well-known one; in July 2010 Chrissie Wellington defended her Challenge Roth title in Germany in a new “ironman-distance” (not Ironman as per WTC) world record time of 8:19:13, placing seventh overall and bettering her own record by more than 12 minutes. Anyway I digress! It does provide some great footage of household, well Triathlon focused, household names; Dirk Bockel, Caroline Steffen and, Yvonne Van Vlerken as well as some course and crowd views…this race is well supported!

Originally designed for someone who has a treadmill next to their bike trainer (I don’t) it also has been modified to allow you to run on the road off of the bike and that’s my review methodology. Additionally I used the TrainerRoad Version of this workout which obviously focuses only on the Bikes segments. To facilitate the ride/run I used my Garmin 500 on my bike set to AutoPause. My Garmin 910xt which would allow me to switch from Run to Bike and back. I also wrote out all the run workouts on PostIt notes which I would carry for each run segment, they are all different and too complex to remember!

After the modified 4 minute warm up I skipped the first transition and then hopped on my bike, for me transitions are a challenge as I wear no socks for cycling but do for running so it’s an additional challenge (no pun intended) especially as my feet warm up etc. The first bike section lasted another 17 minutes which included the bike warm up and the first Brick. The Bricks are a 4 x 8 minutes bike/4 minutes run, with a 30 seconds transition in between each time. Every single interval across the bikes and runs are built out from micro intervals including surging accelerations, steady state and climbing.Now because I ran on the road I cannot comment on the run footage but I assume it contains much the same in the form of directions and footage of well…people running! For my transitions I placed a chair next to my bike to make things easier per my sock issue!

 

As usual you get the on screen prompts that provide you a Cadence, RPE, countdown clock and new for this video and “up/down” indicator which tells you what’s coming next up being more work and down being an ease off

When using TrainerRoad and my Stages PM I simply followed the on screen power-line, of course there is no line for the run but you can see it was still picking up my heart rate as I ran in and out of my garage! These are the first two intervals and the warm up on TrainerRoad;

The intervals on the bike translate into the following zones and you can see the percentage of time spent in them to get a feel for the level of effort across this ride.

Not sure about the 2060 Power!

Because I was using two Garmins I was able to generate two files, this is the overall bike file from Strava, you can clearly see the transitions;

For the running I generated one file using 910xt but when uploaded it created multiple entries into everywhere I tried (Strava, GC, SportTracks) so it looks like this;

So to give you an idea this is one Brick segment;

And this is a bike segment;

So enough of the all the screen shots, data and quantitative stuff, what about the qualitative info? Well the race footage is great, in the more than three years I have been using ‘fests the video quality has gotten better each time, this is clear in your face race footage that you would expect to see on the TV. The soundtrack is as usual kickass, a good mix of indie rock and techno, which is right in my ball park!

The workout was put together by Neal Henderson from Apex Coaching, the same sick minds folks who came up with ISLAGIATT and Violator…and yeah the same guy that coaches Taylor Phinney from Pro team BMC and head coach at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, Side note; here’s a link to an excellent article about data driven training he is quoted in.

The Bricks are hard, not impossible hard but they make you work, the micro intervals keep you engaged and focused on what’s going on, of course using TrainerRoad makes your life easier as the intensity is based on your FTP. As my running has not been anything to write home about this year I was interested to see what an my perceived levels of effort would turn out to be and pleasantly surprised that I was, albeit for a short distance, able to get my pace easily(ish) into the mid 6’s!

In total the video lasts just over an hour and it’s an hour of quality work, no junk miles here!

Need a teaser…here you go;

The Sufferfest - Trailer - Chrysalis (Triathlon) from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

Chrysalis is available online now to download for $12.99, in a sport that is renowned for it’s expensive kit, this could be the best three Starbucks lattes you can miss!

This product was purchased (yeah sick I know). Other Sufferfest Reviews are available to read here.  If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com.

Step back, move forward…

This week was a step back week for me, quite simply I planned to eliminate doubles. Somehow the planets aligned and I managed to pick some snotfest lurgy. I felt it coming on last Sunday and then thought I had shrugged it off on Monday, but Tuesday morning I woke up with what felt like my head in vice so with a pragmatic head on I missed Tuesday’s run and missed Tuesday’s commute and stayed at home! Come Wednesday I was back in work but I skipped the scheduled swim. By Thursday I was starting to feel a little more human I passed on the scheduled tempo run and took a somewhat sniffy cougy fiver miler before dawn. By Friday I was feeling on the upswing and was back in the pool for a slower than usual 1800 yards. I switched out Saturday’s swim for a return to the tails and spent a glorious two hours running around the local trails at Chesebro Canyon.

This is an old picture but you get the idea!

With one day left of rest week I decided to ride short and fast and tack a run onto the end of it, the original plan was to head to the coast and hit PCH but after 30 minutes of being blown left, right, up and down and at one point I was blown clean into the middle of the road, it was no fun and was to be honest just plain dangerous so I threw the bike into the truck and headed inland. After a short drive I was out of the wind!

Here is quick video of the ocean, the waves are rolling in at around 6-8’, you get an idea of the windiness, there were some seriously scary gusts!

So Take Two. Four laps around a local lake, it measures a little over 5 miles and is essentially a square ride, one side is downhill and the other three are up, there’s not a lot of climbing but there’s not a lot of coasting either. The first mile was a bit fudgy as I was getting out a parking lot but I soon settled in. A little over an hour later I was done with 21 miles on the clock. Overall I was very happy with this as M2-15 was completed in 43:44 (19.31mph) my first Tri in 4 weeks has a 14m ride so hopefully I can hit 20mph+. I was hoping for 19mph+ as an average and prolly would have got it were it not for the start and few uncooperative traffic lights!

Ave HR 142 Ave cadence 93…me likey! Right on the red line of Tempo pace!

One thing I am noticing is that the hydration system is not encouraging me to drink, while its more aerodynamic to have the bottles mounted behind the seat I am not drinking from them! This is getawayable for shorter rides or cooler rides but cometh the Summer I am going to be blowing up left, right and center so I am rethinking my set up. After the ride I jumped into my Newtons and set of for another lap around the lake. Overall it went pretty well although I got a bit thirsty and went out a bit too fast but settled into my stride, it certainly was a lot better run than last week!

Picked up the pace in the last mile

So step back week is over and my cold is more or less gone…four weeks to race day, three to build one to step back!

Setting expectations!

I am usually late, actually that’s not quite true, in my professional life I am usually on time, occasionally early, in any typical week I spend 20-25 hours in meetings in various buildings as my company has expanded so I am often seen “fast walking” along corridors or playing frogger across the four lanes that runs between buildings. In my personal life I am a disaster! Why do I mention this, well because the expectation is that I will be late and so people, it would seem, bake that into their timelines.

So as mentioned yesterday my plan today was to run off the bike for 30 minutes. I was almost on time arriving back and figured that I would be able to squeeze in a quick 25 minutes or 3 miles, all I had to change shoes and ditch some of the cold weather clothing I was wearing, leg warmers etc. As I rounded the corner I could see my house and I could also see the SUV was off the drive…no one was in, I had no keys either! I dismounted and dug out my phone texted and called my wife but there was no reply. 50 minutes later she showed up.

“…well you’re always late so I figured you would be this time…”

Yep expectations set and met! No biggie I sat on the front step in the sunshine and chillaxed, not quite the Brick I hoped for! That being said my ride went well it was very much a two parter, the first 20 miles spent on flat and fast loops around a local lake, the next 30 miles climbing through the Santa Monica Mountains and then an easy 5 or so rolling home.

It was by far the longest ride on the new Cannondale Slice with the newly installed Adamo Break Away saddle, it went pretty well and all things considered I was comfortable, it’s going to take a little getting used but I did make a point of wearing Tri shorts rather than cycling shorts as that’s what I will be wearing on race day, I have also fitted my hydration solution which is an XLab Turbo with double Gorilla Cages, the bottles stayed in ok for the whole ride although I did notice that they were working their way out. something to be weary of in the future! 

So this end another week of training and all things considered it went pretty well, 4 days of doubles, the only miss was today’s brick run so I was about 3 miles/25 minutes behind the curve, with 134 miles covered in 12:18

My dyslexic tri…

I had decided to mix things up a bit on Saturday and dust down my road bike, I’ve not been on it for about 6 months of so, but then my wife suggested I ran Cheeseboro trails, she’d been hiking there on Friday and said it was gorgeous with all the spring flowers…undecided I did what every sensible person would do I posted the question on Twitter:

To which I got the following responses:

or the less verbose…

Perfect I thought, and so Friday night I dusted down my steed, got the rubber up to 120psi and dug out my cycling garb. Saturday morning I had no plan but I wanted to get in some rolling hills so I headed out towards the foothills of the Santa Monica’s, I had about 90 minutes to play with and rode a route that I knew to a point, although I had never gone beyond a certain bend and so I followed my nose…a few bends later I saw this:

Hmm that will be rolling for sure, I toyed with turning around…for a nano second! I gingerly made my way down, this is about halfway…

And finally I got to more or less the bottom and turned around…

Ohhh that’s a big hill I thought! I set off. Now remember that bit it about not riding on the roads in probably six months! Well I do ride a triple and boy did I need it, I ground up the hill wondering exactly how slow could I go before I fell over sideways and when should I unclip? The final 300 yards was the worst a big pot hole and no verge edged me out into the middle of the road on a blind corner, I held my breath, metaphorically, physically I was puffing nineteen to the dozen! I nabbed this photo just at the top.

I topped out and headed home! Phew! I changed into some runners and more comfortable shorts in fact I was trying out some Piston Compression shorts from Sugoi (review to follow), I don’t think I will win any prizes for my transition. Thirty three minutes and four miles later I was done! A quick Recoverite Strawberry smoothie (Recoverite Powder, Acai juice, FF Frozen Yogurt and frozen Strawberries) and a shower later I was heading off to The Little Gym with our youngest, an hour later I was heading off to the “Big Gym”, to meet my wife and our eldest who was finishing up Karate; divide and conquer is the order of the day at the weekend! Two kids checked into the kids club and I was in the pool. I think this is a candidate for the longest transition evah! Thirty five minutes and 1000 yards later I was done! Oh apart from the 14 laps around Costco that came after lunch! So there was my dyslexic Tri; Bike, Run, Swim!

I finally downloaded all my Garmin data this morning and, well I’ll let the graph from my ride speak for itself…

Today I am off to see the finish of the Tour de California…more on that later!