2014 Tour Of Sufferlandria Official Introductory Thread
Oh yes I did, B! 
Welcome to the Tour of Sufferlandria Sign In Thread!
Please use this thread to introduce yourself to your fellow teammates, telling us a little bit about you, your goals for the race, etc!
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For me, I'm just looking to hit each stage at the assigned intensity. No swim or run workouts planned, this will be my focus.
Let's do this!
Would be helpful if the coaches could provide guidelines for anyone considering this, like "You should consider the TOF if..." And vice versa. Or maybe I'll just ask...
@Mike, Day 1 of the TOS is Rubber Glove, so that could count as your end of OS FTP test. As to the run, I would recommend either hitting a VDOT test sometime early/mid week of 13 or waiting til after the TOS and you've had a chance to recover. As to what the TOS took out of me, I started the TOS at about 90-95% of recommended bike intensity but planning on keeping my runs up. After about three days, I decided to drop the runs and bump the bike intensity up to the 'assigned' sufferfest zones. I was able to finish strong, but like I said earlier, my legs were smoke-checked. Took me longer than I anticipated to recover. However, I found it a fun way to end the OS and I definitely don't think it negatively impacted my Texas (the Texas heat, a TOTALLY different story, but that's another thread). In the end, it was definitely something fun that had me looking forward to working out each day.
I'm in this year....gonna end my OS with this as a substitute outside Big Bike Week (and TSS bump)...then 2 weeks of Swim Camp with an Half Marathon test on the middle weekend (Myrtle Beach Half which I did last year) ...all to end the OS, get my legs back, Swim started...and ready for IM TX race prep...
At least thats the plan.... oh...and I'm with you Roy...goal is to try and follow the Sufferfest targets...but will default to normal Z3/Z4 if necessary...
I completed the whole tour last year and really loved it, although I had to dial the intensity down to 90 or 95% a few days near the end because I was just hammered. I'm definitely in again this year, except I am going out of town the last 2-3 days and will have no way to complete those days. So.....I may start 2-3 days early and do those rides out of order. Trying to decide.....
So Roy and others who have done ToS and IMTX (or similar timewise)....
What do you do with the rest of your workouts during ToS week? Do you treat it as a Big Bike Week? (ie. follow the BBW recommendations)...
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I agree with Paul! After all these OS vo2 and tough 20 minute FTP workouts I think you guys are nuts. You run a high risk of burnout staying at these high effort levels and this has nothing to do with age!
I am at the point where I am mentally tired of getting on the bike and hammering so freaking hard. I have taken the in between days in the OS and just spun for an hour just to know the feeling again of an easy ride.
With respects to how it impacted Texas last year, FOR ME, I would argue that it didn't. I hit a hard bike week, then took a week off (as did most other OS's following the EN guidelines). I jumped into the beginning of the IM plan the same time everyone else going to Texas did. YMMV.
In all honesty, I really try not to over think these things. My math is simple, does this look fun? Yes. Can I do it rather easily with negligible impact on SAUs? Yes. Will me and a few other EN geeks start a workout thread and talk about how cool we are while annoying other EN peeps not doing it? Probably. Will it have a negative impact to the rest of my year. No. Sign me up! Again, the majority of my notes are very n=1, so be sure you perform your own personal calculus prior to doing anything
Sometimes, TR's matchup and your FTP simply will not work and the 'fests are too hard to do @ the prescribed intensity. This is true especially for hell hath no fury, but I've experienced it in other videos as well (like angels). HHNF cannot be done @ 100 percent--you spend too much time above FTP, and for others I've found that I have to have a perfect day. I'd like to finish this thing, so dialing down the intensity to 90 or even 80 percent on a day or two may be simply a necessity.
Here's the load at 100 percent (in TSS), per Trainer road:
Rglove-81
It Seemed Like a Good Idea--160
Revolver--82
HHNF-116
Extra Shot and the Wretched-36+72
AVDP-83
Angels and The Hunted-93/93 (this one scares me)
Blender-148 (this one scares me too)
Violator - 129 (suspect legs will fall off).
Total TSS: 1093.
That is a BIG hole. Second the call for coach help. An 800 TSS week is still a big week. We could baseline guess the recovery by (a) picking a CTL we're starting from; (b) typing this into Golden Cheetah as manual entries in a blank month; and (c) see how long it takes the fatigue line to approach non-suicidal levels. And that doesn't take into account the -nature- of the efforts. 64 sprints??? At the end of the week? Color me more than a little apprehensive.
Good Review Chris!...and I have posted a Question to Coach P in my personal thread about using ToS as a big bike week...I will let you know what he says...and will try to get them to chime in on this thread.
Glad to hear your comments regarding HHNF....I have been turning myself inside out to try and keep up with those chicks...I usuall have to back off somewhere during the second 20minute interval...it is my goal to match them eventually!...
@Joe --
If you can match them, you can bump your FTP. (At least, in the pre-2013 version). I read a couple of posts on this on the 'tubes but now can't find them.
Jan OS "Big Week" ... Kind of blows a two week hole into your training. But then, I'm not one to talk, as I routinely do 2-3 weeks of skiing in the middle of the OS, like Jan 25-Feb 7. I split my OS into two six-weeks segments, as a result started middle of Dec.
Good luck, All. Just be prepared to dial down the intensity as needed.
I also think I'll start a cross-fit thread too
(What follows is NOT tongue in cheek). I for one enjoy reading about the epic, non- tri adventures of EN team mates. My comments were meant to temper the enthusiasm of any fellow Jan OSers about this, to make sure that it was part of their long-term season plan, and not a spur of the moment lark. TOS is a Real Deal, and will be around next year I assume. For those who want to jump in, they should plan in advance for how it fits in their overall season goals.
Ray- although I realize I will always have a birthday that falls after everyone's born before me, i typically reserve the term 'young punks' to the guys that my 18 year old daughter puts up on her facebook page, not dudes on the far side of their 40th birthday...
Re-jiggered my A race to september, so I think I'm cool
@Roy
I was actually going to do this race this weekend but I can't go the night before and I am not getting up at 4 to drive. I was going to send you the shirt! The Auburn Classic Half!
http://www.auburnrunning.org/
I'm in. I've been planning on this since the start of the NOS and am considering it an experiment with my fitness. Have the videos locked and loaded, did AVDP
last week to remind me to be skeered, am actually considering lowering my ftp a little in TR to make it manageable (have missed some key bike workouts w/travel in December), will plan a few recovery days before the Grand Departure ... it should be fun ... in a Sufferlandria kind of way. Haven't done something like this before so it will be interesting to see what my fatigue levels feel like as the tour progresses.
Hey Folks,
Jumping in here with the Party Line, as I'm seeing a bit of Shiny Object Syndrome. This is a response I wrote recently in an athlete's Macro Thread:
Ugg...I can tell I'm gonna need to do a Sufferlandia thread next week, as I've seen this question a lot this week...
Here's the deal: if you wanna ride fast you gotta ride fast. Volume like that comes at the expense of the intensity that makes you faster, not to mention that you're doing indoors on a trainer = a huge mental cost. I see you're doing IMCDA. I've raced CDA 3x and have coached about a bazillion people to the race. Folks from all over the country with a range of winter cycling limitations and opportunities. I can't say that the people who did volume in the winter (ie, SoCal folks like me who can ride as much as we want pretty much year round) were any faster on the bike than NorthEast folks who just hammer intervals on the trainer. The return on race day certainly wasn't worth the time investment.
The formula that absolutely WORKS is to ride fewer hours so you can ride harder = get faster now, then add volume to it beginning in about April. Something like ToS would be much more valuable ~mid-May through early June. Not so much now.
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More:
ToS, and products / training tools (?) like it are created like this: "hey, there's a ton of folks stuck on trainers this time of year "building their base." Let's think up some whack training schedule that will have them sitting on their trainers for hours and hours, watching our videosorwhatever!"
^That^ is not how we are training you. ^That^ is not how we have structured your training plans and your season plan. I'm not saying this is going to ruin your season and you're probably not going to die
. But I just want everyone to be clear on what you likely will/will not get out of this, based on our experience.
Of course, we understand wanting to do something cool with your fitness. And the timing of this is sorta similar to back in the day when the Tour of California was in Feb and we'd take people straight from the OS and drop them into a 1500+ TSS cycling week. But that was OUTDOORS and the fookin' TOUR OF CALIFORNIA = epic coolness.
We, as your coaches, would much rather see you create an epic cycling opportunity like this (call it a >1k TSS cycling week) much closer to your race vs January. Yes, if you do ToS you will have done something cool with your fitness. But unless your A-race is in March or April, it absolutely will not make you any faster on race day.