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…