A Knight To Be

Week 10. 14 days to go. It's when you're singing along, humming to the tunes on "It Seemed Like Thin Air" that you know you've been doing this for a while. As the 40-minute climb draws to an end, "Don't Talk To Me" plays loud over the TV speakers. Louder than the 20" metal-bladed fan, spinning at full blast, that's for sure. My wife, who had just come back home from work, gets the message — no exchange of words necessary. The puddle of Sufferlandrian Holy Water beneath me extracts a nose scrunch, though. I keep an eye on the clock because I'll be doing the cooldown on the MTB on the way to fetch the kids from school. It was close this time. I lost electricity twice during the session. Luckily, we have a backup diesel generator to keep everything working while the main feed from the electric company is down - which happens more often than not these days. It can be because of the rain, a fire, or some maintenance work - but you'l...

Week 9, 21 days to go. Today I took the Empty Tank Express . I'm in the Peak phase of the plan, and while I haven't tested my legs in a race or anything more demanding than the Full Frontal Test, I'm hitting minor breakthroughs consistently. Xert helps me keep tabs on my progress, maintaining the balance between informative analytical data and analysis-paralysis (e.g. Today's Plan). Revolver + Half Is Easy What you see here, are two Sufferfest workouts done back-to-back. " Revolver ," followed immediately by "Half is Easy". Here, have a taste: Both these workouts revolve around the same idea: equal work to rest ratio, at VO2max or above. Revolver is 1 minute On, 1 minute Off. Half Is Easy dishes out 2 sets of ~10 minutes each, with 15sec On, 15 Off. Now, look here. On the one hand, I have a VO2max (MAP) weakness. On the other, I have Repeated Efforts as a strength ("Attacker!"). The result of these two comb...

Week 8, 26 days to go. I get that tingling feeling from time to time. No, it's not the beta-alanine OD, although that's fun too. It's when you KNOW that you can go harder than the workout demands of you. It's that feeling of restrained, controlled patience. The sensation of having more to give, even though you don't need to. And when you get that feeling in "A Very Dark Place," then you know you've come a long way. It also hints that a Full Frontal Test is imminent for raising that bar once again for renewed, fresh, Suffering. The Sufferfest - A Very Dark Place - Trailer from The Sufferfest on Vimeo . The value of repeating a challenging workout on the same plan cycle is immense. The comparison, at least in RPE, is invaluable. I could go technical and compare in detail how the two repetitions of A Very Dark Place differ. I did that for The Shovel here: https://suffer.tavor.io/2019/10/mining-courage.html The bottom line is that this ti...

End of Week 7 In 34 days, I'll wave to you all from the peak of Mt. Sufferlandria. You won't see me, of course, as looking up towards the summit is a sure way to burn your eyes blind with the falling lava snow. I'm heading into a rest week now, having finished another 3-week block of the Advanced Sufferfest Training Plan. These past few days were rather enjoyable if you also consider fun to be constant fatigue, sore muscles, burning sensations, and pain as an unrelenting companion. In dread of losing form and tolerance during the rest week, I'm adding a spoonful of this stuff to every glass of water: Tangy, but a Sufferlandrian delicacy on par with Real-Pagne. This past week, as you may recall, crept upon the heels of ISLTA and some strength work. It then continued with " 14 Vice Grips " - a VO2Max session of 14 intervals ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. These get progressively longer, then shorter in two sets of seven intervals: 14 Vic...