Sufferfest at Cycling Concepts Indoor Traiining Rides...

Keith owner of Cycling Concepts

CC's Suffer Chamber

Well another night in Sufferlandria for all of us at Cycling Concepts thanks to Keith Sherman the owner.  Keith, Dave and Sondre from Cycling Concepts, and the rest of us Sufferlandrians all ride indoor to a Sufferfest Video (Angels) on Wednesday Night.  Keith has been nice enough to open the Glastonbury Shop on Tuesday nights and Rocky Hill on Wednesday nights for many riders to train during the winter months here in CT. 

We had been doing Coach Troy's Spinervals for many years and wanted a change.  As a long time Sufferlandrian I asked if we could do a sufferfest video and purchased a Group version of Angels for us to try.  Angels is a hill climbing workout set in the Mountains of France and has footage of the Tour de France and great music tracks to ride to.  The footage helps to motivate by showing you the kind of effort needed to tackle such feets, and the music keeps you from hearing others as the groan in pain. 

Pre-Ride warm-up.



After finishing the first video, Dave decided to put in "The Long Scream" which I could only do about 10 minutes of, but Dave and Keith managed to finish the 30 minute TT effort.

Another great night of suffering and pain...

Outdoors in February...NICE!

Road the Cromwell Flats today, and it was great to get outdoors for a ride.  The winds were down, and the it was chilly but nice.  For February it was a great day in the upper 40's.  It is much tougher to ride outdoors that to ride on the trainer, but having been outdoors this winter and training hard indoors should make for a good riding seasons.  Now I just need to stop eating so much junk food...wish me luck.
Here is my Garmin File:



Hope the weather holds and we have an early spring season...NICE!

Kinetic Pro Flywheel - 18 lbs. of hell...

Wednesday Nick and I went on a ride outdoors in the hills of Marlborough, and as usual I sucked at hills.  My heart rate was jammin but my legs weren't.  It took a great effort for me to ride on the road, espcially in the hills.  More so than the effort needed to train indoors on my Kinetic Trainer with an 8 lb flywheel, which by the way is harder to train on than most out there. 
After the ride, Nick offered to let me use his Kinetic Pro Flywheel that adds an additional 12 lbs to the already existing flywheel, making the combined weight 18 lbs. Last night was my indoor ride on the reconfigured trainer at Newington Bike, and we did Spinervals - Mental Toughness, 90 mins of tempo riding. 

The added weight meant that spinning up was much more difficult, but so was maintaining a higher cadence.  It was more like riding on the road than before, which is exactly what I need.  The only caviat is that this ride was the day after riding in the hills, so my legs might have been a bit toasty, but I lost about 1 mile and hour and 10 rpms off my avg cadence, although there was a lot of big gear riding in the video.  I think I will have to wait until a few more indoor rides before I know whether these numbers are typical or not, however I can't hurt.



 Here is my Garmin File: