Thursday, December 25, 2014

Sufferfestukah 2014 - Day 6 (the final day!)

DAY 6: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Webb: Day 6 of Sufferfestukah was so tough, it's taken us a few days to post this blog entry. The first five days were fun in that accumulating fatigue sort of way. Angels, The Wretched, Half is Easy, The Rookie and Nine Hammers all led to ISLAGIATT. Four climbs of 15:00, 20:00, 20:00 and 8:00. Each is different and none are real grinders. They are like real climbs with pace changes, stem-chewing tempo and, of course, some big gear work.

This workout began with some difficulty. I opened TrainerRoad and saw that it still could not find Elle's ANT+ USB stick. We had this problem on Day 5. She rode Nine Hammers blind to power, relying only on her speed and cadence on her Garmin, you know not old school, older school. Meanwhile, TrainerRoad Companion worked fine for me. Except on this final day when TrainerRoad Companion could not find my ANT+ USB stick either.

It turns out that Elle had installed the new Garmin Express which causes problems with the ANT+ USB communication. The real issue is that it runs in the background all the time. It is an easy fix to shut off that feature in your system settings. Garmin Express now no longer lurks in the background so TrainerRoad works fine. I figured this out after ISLAGIATT which might have been a good thing.

For the first five days I set TrainerRoad to 80% and came out of each workout increasingly more tired but never crushed. It felt great. I decided to ride ISLAGIATT hard, maybe not 100% hard, but testing myself nonetheless. The plan was to ride at my honest RPE and if I faltered, to continue riding at my RPE, even if that meant my watt output decreased as the workout progressed. That definitely happened. Afterwards, I compared my distance to the last time I did ISLAGIATT in June (when I was in shape). That time I had ridden at 90% and only went about 1/3 of mile farther. That feels pretty good.

Elle: Holy lava snow, Batman! Ok, so this day was hard. Real hard. Super hard. Didn't know if I was going to make it. Really. But I turned my brain off, closed my eyes, and accepted the 2-hour cloak of misery that was about to consume my life. But instead of focusing on all the ways this workout is awful and painful, I'm going to list my 5 favorite things about ISLAGIATT:

Elle's Top 5 Favs for ISLAGIATT
1. Synchronized nose swipe!
2. The minions can't stand Gloworm. No one can.
3. Trying to count all the logos on Billboard. You can't! There are just. too. many.
4. At 55:15 minutes in, a spectator off to the right takes a big fall down a hill. Ha! Probably a Couchlandrian...
5. Hurtado-ing. Lots and lots of hurtadoing.


Webb: I will add to the list the moment where the music, video and workout come together perfectly. It is not only my favorite singular moment of ISLAGIATT but of all Sufferfest workouts. There is something about the tempo riding up the mountain with an increasingly anxious techno-chamber music, the drop below tempo as the music also settles down, then back into the climbing and again a short respite. The music begins to subtly build once again as you climb at RPE 6.5 then just as the electro-bass drops Team Sky comes around a turn in a pace line. It is impossible not to drive the pace yourself.

Elle: Hope all had a happy and healthy Sufferfestukah, see you all at the end of January for the Tour of Sufferlandria!

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