Report by Martin Arundel

It's winter and I have no desire to slip on black ice and break.

Roller and turbo sessions tend to be my January/February riding companions. The excellent sessions run by Rachel are great but that's only one day a week and ‘winter miles make summer smiles’, what am I to do...?

I have used TrainerRoad (TR) for some time and with it some of the videos from TheSufferfest which when combined, add extra ‘fun’. TR provides plans which are quite useful although lacking the valuable feedback that Rachel can provide.
TR and Sufferfest join forces each year and put on a ‘virtual tour’, 9 days of turbo sessions, no day off. You are advised to ‘tone down’ your daily efforts and to be honest you have no choice. I attempted this last year and got sick after day 7, this year I built up to it on rollers having been ill at the beginning or the year.

2822 people register, good job the digital highway can fit everyone in!

Day one consisted of two shorter sessions, the first one teaching you ‘form’ the second being a time trial, not too bad, an ‘easy start.

Day two, ah one of the longer ‘stages’ 1 hour 44 minutes, after an hour you have three sets of sprints followed by three longer steady state pulls.

Day three, four steady states with intermittent sprints.

Day four, a session I hadn’t done before, nine sets at your sweet spot... this is getting hard...

Day five, usually one of my favourites Angles consists of three ‘climbs, I struggled and am feeling a little jaded.

Day six, so the ‘easy’ days have gone, 1 hour 25 minutes later I am gibbering wreck, hallucinating I think that someone has stolen my legs.

Day seven, by this stage my form isn’t good. My usual 100 rpm is down to 94, but if required I can spin up for the ‘sprints’ - just.

Day eight, the one I’ve been dreading. On the positive side its Saturday on the negative side this is three sessions back to back. To make it much much worse all the sessions are ‘sprints’. The middle session ‘Violator’ has 64 individual efforts alone. I have done many long Audax rides, Lejog and back, London Edinburgh London in under 4 days; 10 minutes in I was ready to get in the broom wagon. mentally the hardest session I have ever done. Whoever designed this (Grunter Von Agony is his name...) should be locked up and flogged with a shredded chamois.

Day Nine, one more session to do :-) Its just under 2 hours. I tried my best, the ‘intensity’ was only 80% and sufferer score 65 (figures from Strava) but quite frankly that was as much as I could muster.
1680 people complete the tour. A fleet of broom wagons carry 1142 tired riders, unable to complete the task.

What have I learn’t? Immense respect to the pro’s who do 3 week tours; they often ride 7 days without a break having forced the pace each day in a similar fashion (usually the last hour) to the turbo sessions.

I probably never do this tour again, (till next year)

If anyone wants more details (turbo/kit used etc) let me know

Martin

Midway through day 8, still half an hour to go: