During cold winter months, cyclists maintain fitness by riding indoors on rollers or on a trainer, and some venture into the fitness world of Spinning classes. One entrepreneur developed the Sufferfest training series for challenging and fun winter workouts. Cyclists around the world find these videos to be challenging, motivating, and fun—just the ticket for successful indoor workouts.
Even in Tucson, Arizona, sub-freezing temperatures kept cyclists indoors last week. “I watched Ice Age 2: The Meltdown with my son who was home sick from school,” says Jen Lynn, of Tucson Tri Girls. Lynn coaches athletes from all over the United States through Desert Endurance Multisport Coaching. Cyclists who prefer to watch movies, or old cycling races, can use the trainer workout at the end of this article, provided by former pro cyclist and co-author of Training and Racing with a Power Meter, Hunter Allen.
David McQuillen created the Sufferfest videos modeled on his own indoor training experience of watching pro cycling races and listening to motivating music. At the time, he was training for a charity bike ride across Tibet and Nepal, with a finish line at the Mt. Everest Base Camp.
He combined the licensed pro cycling video footage and music into one package: placing the user in the middle of the pack, or being chased, or going for sprint points. On-screen instructions tell the cyclist what to do at each stage. For example, the instructions will state: do a 2:00 minute interval at an effort level of 8/10 (the videos explain the effort levels).
Sufferfest videos are sold exclusively through online downloads and the file sizes are quite large at over 1GB each. It’s essential to have a fast, reliable internet connection. Each title costs $11.99, and the.mp4 format can be played on a computer, burned to a DVD, or transferred to a mobile device like a smartphone or Apple iPad.
Sufferfest videos range from intense, flat-out, short intervals in “Downward Spiral” to longer, less-intense, climbing efforts in “The Hunted.” The Sufferfest website offers short previews of each title. The latest video “Local Hero” includes footage from 2010 UCI Road World Championships in Geelong, Australia, and has the indoor cyclist battling against pros like David Millar and Fabian Cancellara.
“I use Downward Spiral, Revolver, and The Hunted,” says Nichiless Dey, who rides his bike inside in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Germany. He says in February the weather is "mist, snow, very deep at times, frozen roads, and no cycling." The British citizen and member of East London Velo CC teaches physics and math at the Cologne International School. Although he works 50 plus hours a week, Dey rides three times a week indoors during the winter for one and half to two hours each session.
Dey continues, “The Sufferfest videos are fun but tough. If you really put in the effort the narrator suggests then by the end you know you have had a work out. I tend to need a lot of recovery between sessions!” He also uses spinning classes and weekend mountain bike rides to maintain fitness as weather conditions improve in the spring.
"It's cold here, I haven't ridden outside since October," says Sam Krieg who blogs about cyclocross training. Krieg lives in Pocatello, Idaho. "It is easy to get mentally lost during the long winters. Some days, I feel like a static machine," while riding indoors, he says. This climbing and cycling entrepreneur explains that Sufferfest helps train for the dynamic demands of racing: "Watching Netflix doesn’t feel like deliberate practice. These videos help remind me to train for racing."
Krieg races in time trials, road races, and cyclo-cross; and he coaches other cyclists. Krieg says the Sufferest: "reminds me to attack and suffer a bit more than normal. I find myself in the drops a bit more than normal and I also seem to dig a bit deeper when watching the pros racing."
Hunter Allen, founder of Peaks Coaching Group, makes the most of his indoor trainer time by focusing on power output, measured in watts. He creates cycling specific workouts for the athletes he coaches. He describes the following trainer workout as: “Sub-threshold (Level 3 and 4) with bursts above to Anaerobic Capacity(Level 6) and a touch of Vo2 Max (level 5).” Note: Functional Threshold Power is the highest average power or pace you can maintain for one hour. Andrew Cogan, Ph.D., wrote an informative article explaining functional threshold power, and its importance for cyclists.
Trainer ride: 15 minute warm-up, one hour workout, then 15 minute cool down (total time: 1.5 hrs)
Warm up: 15 minutes
Main Set: 20 minutes with watts of 88-93% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) and include 5x 30 second bursts to get watts to 120% of your FTP, then recover to previous watts of 88-93%.
Next: 10 minutes cruise in the 39:15 (big ring:small ring) at 110 rpm
Then: 3x5 minute efforts keeping watts at 108-110% of FTP but below 115%, cadence in the 95-100 range. Rest for 5 minutes between each effort.
Cool down: 15 minutes easy spinning to cool-down.
Coach Allen explains: “This is designed to help improve your threshold, although not too aggressively and also keep your ability to change speeds. So when you begin riding outside, it’s an easier transition. The Vo2 Max efforts at the end are in order to make sure you continue working on this system during the winter.”
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