Awesome, I was wondering when the schedule was going to come out.

Do you know where I can find more information about each stage like time, IF, TSS, and profile? I have several of the older Sufferfest videos like The Rookie and Power Station, plus they're still available through TrainerRoad, so it's easy to know what you're getting into but I think the newer videos are only available through the Sufferfest App, right? I'll be signing up for their app for the tour and should be able to see everything then, but if you know where I can find the IF and TSS info that would be great.

 

• STAGE 1, SAT 3RD FEB: WHO DARES + THE ROOKIE ( WD 54Min, 70 TSS, .88IF ; TR 54Min, 76 TSS, .91 IF )
• STAGE 2, SUN 4TH FEB: THE SHOVEL + POWER STATION ( TS 1:16 , 112 TSS, .94 IF ; PS 49 min, 61 TSS, .85 IF )
• STAGE 3, MON 5TH FEB: GETTING AWAY WITH IT ( GAWI 47 Min, 78 TSS, .77 IF )
• STAGE 4, TUES 6TH FEB: THE TRICK ( TT 59 Min, 73 TSS, .86 IF )
• STAGE 5, WED 7TH FEB: FIGHT CLUB ( FC 59 min, 92 TSS, .97 IF )
• STAGE 6, THURS 8TH FEB: DO AS YOU'RE TOLD ( DAYT 43 min, 55 TSS, .87 TSS)
• STAGE 7, FRI 9TH FEB: THE CHORES ( TC 58 Min, 76 TSS, .88 IF )
• STAGE 8, SAT 10TH FEB: BUTTER + THIN AIR ( B 59 Min, 74 TSS, .87 IF ; TA 1:01 , 88 TSS, .93 IF )
• STAGE 9, SUN 11TH FEB: KITCHEN SINK ( TKS 3:00 , 223 TSS, .86 IF )

If my math is right - that is 799 minutes or just a bit over 13 hours - pretty good training block for Feb!

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

How do you do this I have a trainer road subscription. Can I fire it up via there?

Globes

How it works:
https://thesufferfest.com/pages/community-tour-of-sufferlandria

Thanks a bunch...

13 hours and a total of 1078 TSS with all but one ride at .85 or above – pretty good February training block for sure!

I know I'll get called out for being soft, but I have a couple questions for people who have done this before:
Do you typically dial down the intensity a bit or go full out for all 9 days to try to hit the power targets as they are? I'll be on a smart trainer, so there's nowhere to hide...
Do most of you maintain a similar run/swim schedule while doing the TOS? I've been following the BarryP program but am pretty sure I'd want to cut back a bit with the increase in trainer time.

I can't tell if this is a great idea for February or a horrible idea. Or maybe both.

The weekends on this ( Stages 1,2,8 & 9 ) are proper suffering as you might expect for a Tour of Sufferland - but the Monday to Friday sessions are all under an hour. If you're worried about your swim form falling apart or losing an edge on your run - there is time to put in some other workouts, but this is a good training block and I wouldn't worry about the others too much unless you have an upcoming race - in which case ToS may not be the best idea.

It's really a 10 hr / week pace that includes the 2 weekends - much less than that and you could move to Couchland.

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

OK, you're soft for even thinking of dialing down the intensity. :) I've been able to do the 2016 and 2017 ToS at full FTP, but only with some short periods of backpedaling to recover. Some of these stages are pretty tough alone, then a few are doubled up and the overall approach of 9 stages in 9 days...well... Let's just say that I reviewed my training load for 2017 a couple of nights ago, prepping for 2018. My training load was highest during the ToS. So maybe that makes *me* soft during the rest of the season...

2 time ToS finisher here. Never dialed it back Run what ya brung. But Jesus that last day looks awful.

Kitchen sink is epic and hurts so good!
Gonna be my first ToS, fits my cycling block perfectly!

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

This doesn't look so hard

Oh, i have to do ALL of them?

I'm pretty much gonna race myself into shape doing the ToS this year. Haven't been training very hard, mostly just riding along.
Also, little reason to train indoors in SoCal. 6 more weeks of winter just mean 6 more weeks of 80 degrees.
Did Stage 1 at 80% and plan to do the same for Stage 2. Then, 3-7 at 100%. The level for 8 and 9 will depend upon how the week goes.

Stage 1, here we go. Who else is in?

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

Stage 1 done, only 8 more to go...

So much threshold.. this is gonna be a hard week

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

Stage 1 down.

The video froze on me about half way in, but thankfully the timer, cadence/power prompts, and ERG mode still worked fine. I just queued up some Super League on YouTube and finished out watching that. Anyone else ever had the video freeze through the app?

I'm in. Just finished Stage 1. Hard, not awful, but awful is coming...

Stage 1 down.

Thank f**k i have the excuse of working away all week so don't have to do the whole tour :)

Sufferfest is awesome.

Well this lad did it last year age 8. Doing it again 2018. I'm running out of my flimsy excuses..

https://my.davisphinneyfoundation.org/fundraiser/1238950

So far, so good. Heading down for stage 2 soon

I love how The Sufferfest makes me believe I'm sitting in a World Tour breakaway at ~ 90% of my old man FTP. :-) Dropping Jens took not quite 300 watts for a minute or two...

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

Will check that out. thanks for the info

Failed Stage 1 after 95 mins. Just couldn't hang with the final 10mins. Time to dial back from 100% FTP for stage 2

Two stages in the books not too bad yet. In much better shape only eating once per day dropping weight I didn’t need.

Stage 2 started OK and I got the shovel done at 100% FTP and no real defects. But the last 3-4 climbs in power station required some backpedaling and lots of cursing. I think that this is more of a muscular endurance thing - I haven't done many 2 hr rides in ages. Not, repeat NOT, looking forward to the kitchen sink next week. It will require less than 100% FTP and/or a break over the 3 hr ride.

legs are a bit, errrr, toasted today. hoping the legs find their mojo once they start spinning.

aside from Tour of Suf or the odd mashup, i typically don't do the videos like Shovel. i'm guessing it's those sprinting efforts that did me in...

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

All good here. My schedule makes a stage on Friday challenging, so I decided to do stages 4 and 5 today, separated by about 7 hours. Fight Club is my kryptonite - I've been working on it a long time as I actually have a DVD. It took along time before I could get through it without turning down the intensity or just fudging the power targets (pre-ERG). But today was fine, a couple of backpedals to recover, but never during an attack. Stage 6 on Wednesday and then Friday off - probably good timing for a rest day, looking at the weekend stages...

Still knocking them out - definitely starting to feel some deep weakness in the legs with all the sprints... it felt like someone added a few stairs on my way up to bed last night. Three hours on Sunday will be a battle!

---

" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

Just finished Stage 7. I started a day early so that I can Saturday off and finish on Sunday. I did 1 and 2 at 80% and have done the rest at 100%. I've done OK but have had some failures on some intervals.
Getting to the real high power numbers is hard on the sub 30 second intervals on my setup.
The sustained at or above threshold like today really hurt.
Probably gonna back off again for the last two stages.

7 down. Starting to feel the fatigue now. I think it’s really helping develop my mental ability to push hard while fatigued.

Bah! Go Nuclear and spin until your legs fall off. That's my plan anyway

I did the same thing (sort of) - I did stages 4 and 5 on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday, 7 on Thursday and nada on Friday. My schedule would not allow a ride today, the plan just accomodated that, BUT it also seemed like a good idea for more recovery before stages 8 and 9. We'll see if I'm correct tomorrow morning...

8 down, 1 to go...

Couple take backs from today; Butter is awesome and thin air is awful! Went deep last 10 min, now gonna stuff my face till the big finale

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

bring on the big one tomorrow!

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

Expect great things!

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

Did Kitchen Sink as part of SUFDAY a few months back. It was a whopper indeed.

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

Me too, actually loved it! Easily the beat 3h I’ve spent on a trainer ;)
I’ve forced my old man to join me tomorrow, the suffering will be substantial

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

Me, too. The start of the climb in Thin Air had me concerned, but got through it. Three hours tomorrow? Ugh. I'm not sure where I'm going to hurt the most, but 2 hours of saddle time today wasn't awesome, so...

Due to time commitments I swooped 8/9 and did Kitchen Sink first today.
Lasted OK until 2hr31 minutes then it was brutal hanging onto the intervals.
Have fun!

Team Slowtwitch Tour of Sufferflandrians,

For those who tackled and completed (or will be completing tomorrow!) the Tour of Suf this year, please take a few minutes to PM me and answer a few questions for a recap I am putting together to be shared on the ST homepage.

* What was your motivation for doing the ToS?
* Did you do Sufferfest's 4DP prior to the start? Do you plan to do another 4DP at some point after to gauge improvement?
* What did your setup include (what type of trainer, power meter, etc) during ToS?
* Do you feel like a stronger cyclist at the end of ToS then you were at the start?
* Did you put your swim and run training aside and do ToS as a cycling specific training block? If not, how did your swim and run training fare?
* Are Sufferfest videos a regular part of your triathlon cycling training?
* Do you do a significant portion of your triathlon cycling training utilizing Sufferfest or other indoor platforms throughout the season?

Thx, Lars

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

Lars,
May I ask why you seek this info?
I will probably message you after I do Stage 9 tomorrow, but I am curious why you ask.

As stated in my post above, I am putting together a recap for a homepage feature.

Feel free to answer, or not.

There seemed to be solid participation from Slowtwitchers so I figured I'd include others experiences not only my own.

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Lars Finanger
Odyssey SwimRun

Oh, Ok, missed that part. I'll let you know after tomorrow.
BTW So far, it hurts

9 for 9

Will send a private message with answers to those questions as soon as I have more time to type.

Lars, sent you a PM.
All done - great training block.
G

9 for 9, glad that's done, what a ride!

Sent PM with answers to your questions, curious to see the compiled recap. Thanks.

9 for 9, too. I thought that the kilo from Omnium would kill the third hour, but it all worked out OK. I've sent you a PM in response to your Q. My 2nd year on the app - I did 2016 by cobbling together DVD videos and an underground Trainerroad feed, so three years of ToS (although only the last two years are 'recognized').

9 for 9, all full intensity, and no breaks except for a quick bathroom break during the "lay down" part after Omnium today. That was a solid block. PM sent with my answers to your questions.

Also, was it just me or did anyone else occasionally see the blue/black Sky kit and think they were looking at someone from EMJ? These aren't the best examples, but it's what I could find quickly:

Finished it with proper suffering and and bonus charity century on Saturday at Tour De Palm Springs.

I doubled up Stages 6 & 7 on Thursday, then did stage 8 Friday to create an 'off day' to ride with friends at Palm Springs. ( this was a mellow paced ride with couples and no hammering occurred - it was just a long recovery ride mostly) Return to base was delayed on Sunday and I got a late start on Stage 9 - started at 3:00 PM and was still on the trainer in the backyard when friends and family started to arrive for our annual Carnival parade party.

I spent the last hour looking in the windows at people eating my food and drinking my booze while I finished the 3rd hour of Kitchen Sink! I expected at least a little company, but a cold blustery wind kept the revelers inside watching the samba dancers in Rio...finally my dog came by to provide some support and promptly scarfed down my waffle laying open in the bench next to me... then scurried back inside

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978