About Me

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East Grand Rapids, MI, United States
Bicycle tourist turned to ultracyclist turned to ultrarunner. Once joints start to fail, reverse order until I am wheelchair bound.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Knight of Sufferlandria


10 rides. Back to back to back to back...


Indoor bike training.  Ugg, blah, yawn.  Over last couple decades there have been wonderful advancements from the spinny little fans that squeaked along for the mind-numbing duration of workouts of yesteryear.  I've owned Comutrainer (10yrs), Tacx (Bushido x2, Fortius+ x2), and finally Wahoo Kickr x2 yrs.  Kickr has been the most reliable and compatible with sensors, computers, and apps. 

 I've always enjoyed trying out new ways to challenge my indoor workouts. Erg Real course videos are great, then came Zwift and was my favorite in 2015-16, but now Sufferfest has taken over top spot for the pain cave bike workouts.  I had looked at the videos in the past, wondering how they worked with the trainers.  The pricing was confusing and expensive; each video was about $10-15, but there were 3-4 paks for $60 or sometimes certain videos would go on sale.  I just didn't want to fork out money for something I didn't know if Id like or not.  Even worse, if I did like the videos, they looked to be way too pricey to try them all out.  That all changed last fall when they had a free 7-day trial for all videos, AND, if you liked them, simple $10/month or $100/yr to ride ALL videos.  And they added running, Yoga, and even a run/bike video workout.  Super cool.  So I tried it and was hooked after first video.  Fresh, entertaining, and, most importantly, challenging.  The Sufferefest guys have more than just videos.  Training plans, events such as "Tour of Sufferlandria", and they add new videos or runs every few months.  

After a few months of riding these videos, I noticed "Knights of Sufferlandria" link.  Whoa.  10 videos.  In. A. Row.  Are they crazy?  I guess not since over 300 bad-ass people in the world are now knighted as such.  You are allowed to pick any 10, except for the shorter or easier ones.  So I mustered courage and made time for a day.  Feb 28.  That's my day.  I set the FTP % to 100 the first couple videos, but then realized I wouldn't last all the way to #10, so I took it down to 90%.  By video #9, I was toast.  Stopped midway through "There is No Try" and puked into a bucket.  FAILURE!  

Two weeks later I made time again, did "There is No Try" for video #1, and set all videos at 90%.  Video #9 rolled around again and I was seriously faltering, but somehow I pushed through and cruised home on #10 which I saved for last, "Do as You're Told."  This is one of my favourite videos since it is a quick 45min and has some breaks between the hard bits.  Anyway, I'm proud of the 9hrs of bike time, 10.5 hour day (9am-7:30pm).  Sweated and faltered, but prevailed.  Here are the stats:
SSS = Strava Suffer Score  cal= Calories

1 comment:

  1. Jim: Lee Kreider here. I produce the OhioRAAM Show. www.ohioraamshow.com
    Are you still go for RAAM 2021? If so I would like to invite you to guest on our online show on Ultracycling. We do our regular shows on Sunday evening and have just a very few slots left before RAAM. They are going fast. I won't go into technical details. The process is simple. Easier than ZOOM. That's for later. Check the website and see what we do. If interested, let me know.

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