Part 2, just 9h later, after a motorpace session in some gusty winds, and an afternoon amounting to very little.....

Here’s the part where I fully disclose a few things:

Secondly, I have never had to endure a winter in a country where riding outside is completely impossible, and therefore my ergo sessions have always been completely specific to TT preparation (as opposed to substitution for a road ride).

My former coach, Donna Rae-Szalinski, runs a tight ship from her Geelong ‘office’ at Cycle Edge. She has 8 ergos, all with SRM or Powertaps for measuring the suffering. She has a great reputation as a coach (and formerly as a roadie), and lashes the whip across all levels of athletes, from new Mums, masters cyclists, elite female roadies, to Olympians.

Thirdly, I’m not being paid to endorse this video. I also didn’t pay the $11.99 cost for individual use (or $25 for team/group use) but I think that’s pretty cheap for what you get over the 1-2h.

There are so many things to like about The Sufferfest approach to training videos!

They go to a lot of trouble to source excellent music and they scour hours of race footage from the ProTour (men) and now the World Cup (women) in order to show you session-relevant action.

The workload is clearly spelled out, and supportive and/or mocking phrases come up on the screen during your effort. This context adds an element of humour and motivation, as though you’re in the race yourself.

In my case, I WAS in some of those races, and it was nice to see what Emma Pooley actually looks like when she’s accelerating away from the world’s best riders or just how fricking fast HTC Highroad Women looked during their TTT win in Sweden.

In that regard, time passes quickly, there’s a lot to look at, and the clock counting down your workload is shown every minute.

From a training point of view, this particular session is broken into a stage race, complete with ‘transfers’ (recovery between efforts) and some variety in workload – sprints, climbing, rolling turns in a break and finally a teams time trial.

The coach or DS gives you pointers, encourages attacks, guides your rpm (revolutions per minute) and RPE (relative perceived exertion, /10) so as to guage your effort.

It’s a great way to have visual/aural stimulation while you’re working hard on an ergo, and for the recreational or competitive cyclist, it’s a hard workout.

For me, I found it fascinating to see a mixture of the footage from some of the Women’s World Cup races, recognising the terrain of Cittiglio (Italy), Durango (Spain), Plouay (France), Vargaarda (Sweden) Flanders (Belgium) and others.

To see Sara Duester grinding her way up the Muur at Tour of Flanders was pretty special. And I would hope that a lot of guys might see some of the best female roadies in the world in action, close up.

It was a lot of fun, tapping into all your competitive instincts while adding a storyline along to your ‘tour.’

I’d love to see The Sufferfest put together a sprint interval session, or perhaps use some of the aggressive climbs we’ve seen in the last few World Road Championship courses (in particular Mendrisio and Varese) to make a hill-specific session.

All together a great training tool: two thumbs up, without reservation!