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:

3 Hard Indoor Rides...Ouch!

Well tonight was the 3rd Longer duration sets workout in a row that were at or near Threshold...Man!  I wanted tonight to be a lower intensity long duration ride, but got caught up in the group dynamics of the session.  Indoors with 20 people causes you to work harder than maybe is required, especially when you are up front.  Note to self - Next time you have a recovery ride planned, set up in the rear!  Here are the stats from tonight:



For the month so far I am at 184 miles at 14.2 mph avg.  That is close to my goals for those ride dynamics.  My avg cadence is 75, up a bit from 70, but not quite at the 80 I need it to be.  I have to make sure my rest intervals are at a higher cadense while avg 13-14 mph.  This will help once I get to the road also.
If I ride on Sunday 25 miles or 2 hrs, I will exceed 200 miles which will make Januaray a successful month of training.

Indoor training continues...

I went to Newington Bike, and we did a new spinerval workout that included 3 - 10 minute at or near threshold intervals.  I love the longer sets as they more accurately represent workout outside, and the efforts needed to become successfull outdoor.  I again tried to keep my cadence above 100 rpm, but I forgot my 800, so had to use my fr60 watch.  The fr60 did not recognize my speed/cadence sensor, so I had to turn it off.  The fr 60 still was able to capture my time and HR.

Indoor riding...Sunday coming down..

Well I tried to do an indoor session on Sunday at Newington Bike while watching the Raven's defeat the Texans, but I had nothing in the tank:



After Wednesday's all out Threshold Test (Spinervals: Threshold Test and Sufferfest) I really didn't know what to expect, and as it turned out I had nothing.  I couldn't spin, and couldn't get my heart rate up.  I expected to at least be able to maintain my HR in the 130's but to no avail.  I hope I can get it back by tomorrow indoor session.
After 2 week, and looking at my goals of 14mph and an avg cadence of 80, I am on track for the MPH but not the cadence.  I need to be more diligent on that but have seen an increase of 2-3 rpms over last year, which is an improvement.  It is really hard for me to maintain a higher cadence, but have to let my body accommodate to it over time...Smaller gears, higher cadence, and higher cadence during rest intervals are needed.

Winter Indoor Training Schedule for Cycling Concepts
I have create and modified a schedule for indoor training at Cycling Concepts mainly utilizing the Sufferfest Video series.  It can be found at:
Google Docs: CC Winter Indoor Sessions
I have added ride at both shops, and mixed them up a bit so they do not overlap, and tried to make it so that both shop rides make sense as training regimes.  The Rocky Hill regime is a step up routine over a 3 week period culminating in a Threshold test in March.   The Glastonbury regime is a step down routine over 3 weeks also culminating in a Threshold test in March.  I did this so someone can attent both shop rides a get maximal increase in power output by the end of the 8 week period, or attend each ride independently without loosing any fitness over the winter.
It requires that I create disks for Glastonbury, but I have to get DVD's for that so off to office Depot I go...

Indoor Ride Plan for Wednesdays at CC

Last week during our Threshold Test, Dave asked me to put together a plan for videos for our indoor training sessions at CC, and of course I choose, as any good sufferlandian would, www.thesufferfest.com videos.  I tried to mix the rides up to maximize our workout time, and view as many of the videos as possible, and it has a Threshold Test at the end for comparison.  This will be 8 weeks of pure suffering for all!
Here is the list:
Indoors at CC on Wednesday Workout Plan

The workouts will begin on 1/18 with Revolver that features short intervals of high intensity followed by 1 minute rest.  Because we did a Threshold test with a 20 minute max effort last week, I thought short spurts would mix in nicely.  The following week will be a hills session, as we all know, I hate hills, and Angels will undoubtedly make me like them LESS.  At some point we may see an Extra Shot mixed in here or there as a nightly challenge, well at least a challenge to mere mortals...this excludes Dave!