Easy days.

Week 5 (end of).

The Sufferfest training week has me riding the longer sessions on the last two days before the rest day.
For me, this these are Monday and Tuesday, as my rest day is on Wednesday.
(Why? because that's when the cleaner comes and I can't ride and take a shower like a normal Sufferlandrian who has the house to himself.)
Luckily, this first week of the second training month is pretty relaxed.

Three days ago was all about strength with a Yoga session, Strength Training, and then some cadence builds and holds. So neuromuscular training at its best. I use the Halo Neuroscience Headset to neuroprime before these sessions. It seems to help with learning moves and maintaining form, but also I find it reduces RPE. So you're able to perform at very high intensity, yet it's somehow more tolerable. I will try to articulate it better on a later post.

Yesterday (Mon) was "To Get To The Other Side" - a leisurely Tempo ride with The Col Collective's Mike Cotty.
It's a 90-minute endurance/tempo ride to boost base fitness. It has longer, lower intensity intervals and strength work (60rpm) as you ride over some of the most magnificent mountains in Austria and Italy.


Today I have a 2-hour Endurance+ session lined up, which is a "NoVid" session.
Some of The Sufferfest workouts do not have a video or storyline to follow, nor music for that matter. These will be the "drills" (cadence work, basic intervals, recovery spins, etc.).
It's no big deal at all for someone who regularly rode on the rollers for 3 hours, staring at a white wall.
But for everyone else, me included, these days, I have the Sufferfest app running on one computer with ANT+ FE-C control over the Tacx Neo and Zwift on the other computer.
See the post about setup here.
So The Sufferfest app is dictating the power, and I ride it out on Zwift. These new Route Badges have me working overtime :)

So later today, probably once the kids are off to bed and darkness overtakes, I'll hop on for the 2-hour session, which, for sanity, has 10-minute steps of 60 to 65% of FTP.
It's easy: just do it. Some people will wonder about riding this slow for so long, but remember that The Sufferfest is high-intensity-low-volume where you make the most progress on (roughly) 1-hour sessions, so a 1.5-2 hour smooth ride is not only welcome but necessary.


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