2011 Giro de Fred; an indoor stage race

Stage 4

2011-03-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

Its possible this may be the final stage of the Giro de Fred! Should it continue to warm up, by next week we may cancel and just go ride outside! This might be the first cycling event which good weather brings to end.

That being said, based on 20 degree overnight temps tonight, stage 4 is on for tomorrow morning. Its going to be a longer one, 85 minutes of "training". We will start the main video closer 6:30 and still aim to wrap it up by 8AM.

Full details below, see you in the morning!

LOCAL HERO

Our first video over an hour, Local Hero clocks in at 85 minutes of eye-watering, grimace inducing endurance racing featuring the 2010 UCI Road World Championships in Geelong, Australia. It’s perfect for time trialists, triathletes and anyone who’s looking for a long, brutal workout on the turbo trainer. And not only can you sprint against Thor Hushovd, but go back in time to try your luck against LeMond, Bugno and….yes…Cipollini!

And, in true enterPAINment style, we’ve got a helluva storyline for you. This time, you’re heading to the World Championships representing your country: Sufferlandria. Not only are you the first Sufferlandrian ever to compete in the World Championships, but the entire country is dreaming of a Sufferlandrian World Champion. Before leaving for Australia, you compete in a small warm-up cyclocross race, then head Down Under to wake-up those legs in a local pro criterium. With the nerves shaken out of your legs, you go into your first event: the time trial. Competing against Porte, Millar and Cancellara for the podium, you’re willed on the thousands of Sufferlandrian peasants who will accept nothing other than victory (really, they won’t).

After the TT, you head into the road race, looking for alliances with countries like the Ukraine and Italy, while trying to get away before the finish on the steep climbs and rapid flats of the Geelong circuit. When that doesn’t work, you hang on as the chase intensifies and you enter the final kilometer of the race in the front group and the chance at a Rainbow jersey…(Oh, almost forgot, you have a time machine. You’ll understand when you do the video.)

Workout Details

Local Hero was designed for sustained, high-power output with a minimum of rest. It’ll work your strength, leg speed and recovery – and even your top end speed with a few big, world-championship style sprints. About halfway through, you’ll wish it was over, but with a 85 minute video, halfway is still a long, long way to go…..Here’s what you’ll get:

5:00 warm-up, with cyclo-cross footage from Team Globalbike.org
3:00 of criterium racing (with accelerations)in Australia – featuring a couple of well known pros!
3 x 6:00 pyramids – with 2:00 rest between each pyramid
- 1:00 following Richie Porte at 7/10 effort
- 1:00 following David Millar at 7.5/10
- 2:00 following Fabian Cancellara at 8/10
- 1:00 following David Millar at 7.5/10
- 1:00 following Richie Porte at 7/10
5 x 3:00 road race laps with 2:00 rest between each lap. Now each lap has its own personality, with some flatland racing, climbing, jumps or breakaways. You’ll have your chance to chase with Cadel Evans, attack with Philippe Gilbert and Vincenzo Nibali and sprint for the win against Thor Hushovd. Just so you know: unlike Fight Club, which also has 5 laps and features World Championship racing, Local Hero doesn’t have attack after attack. There are some surges, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. As long as you can handle hanging on to the end of a pro peloton until the final sprint, that is! Each lap is done between 7.5 – 8/10, with cadences between 75 and 100.
1 x 2:00 SPRINT! Building up over 2:00, you’re going to increase the speed as you come into the final straight in Geelong. After 75 minutes of racing, can you beat Hushovd? How does 10/10 sound to you?
Um….I’m not going to tell you what’s next. You know how we are. There’s always a twist. Let’s just say that if you ever wished you could sprint against some of the biggest names in the sport for the Rainbow jersey, you’re going to get your chance.
5:00 warm down featuring the oddly interesting Cycleball.

Stage 3

2011-02-28T06:33:00.000-08:00

Were staying in the mountains again this week. Tomorrows stage, "the Hunted" is all about solo effort. Ive done this workout a number of times and its a good one. Some of the best footage we've seen so far and one LOOONG climb.

As always, thank you for supporting Bikes-not-Bombs with your donations, and thanks please support our sponsors, Cambridge Bicycle and thesufferfest.com.

THE HUNTED
You’ve never really been one for hanging out in the pack. You need – you ARE – the escape artist. You crave that feeling of determination when you try to get away. The sensation of joy as your freedom is granted and the gap grows. And you fear that sinking feeling of desperation as you try to hold on to the line as the pack chases you down. Hope. Honor. Glory. Featuring officially licensed footage from the 2010 Tour de Suisse and 2010 Tour de Romandie, The Hunted takes you through it all. Can you ride above yourself and ride to victory?

The Workout

Where the other ‘fest videos have short, nasty and high power intervals, The Hunted is something else all together. Focused on longer, less intense efforts, it gives you a solid threshold workout that still manages to drain you of everything you’ve got. Here’s what happens:

6:30 warm-up: Gradually up the pace, over the intro, footage from a group ride in California, and some pack riding in the Tour de Suisse.
:30 attack: A violent effort to get away from the complacent peloton.
5:00 solo-breakaway tempo riding: You’ll ride at effort level 7/10 with Marco Pinotti as he plows through the TT course of the Tour of Romandie.
20:00 climb: Caught by the group, you’ll start a long, difficult climb in the group, then in a small breakway and ultimately alone as you ride with Robert Gesink over the queen stage in the Tour de Suisse. Efforts range from 7/10 to 8.5/10.
4:00 downhill: This isn’t a time to rest…especially when you’re solo trying to hold off the chasers! You wouldn’t get to take it easy in a race, so I don’t want to hear any whining. You’ll take the resistance off but you’ll ramp that cadence up to 115+ to train some fast pedaling technique.
5:00 small group: Caught by three other riders, you’ll swap off the front in a small breakaway as you hurtle toward the finish line, while the pack looms behind. Effort of 6.5 to 7/10.
5:00 inverse intervals: As you’re the sort who goes for the big glory, you’ll attempt to attack and shed your breakaway companions. You’ll do :50 tempo, then :10 attack, then :40 tempo/:20 attack, :30 tempo/:30 attack, :20 tempo/:40 attack, :10 tempo/:50 attack
?: It wouldn’t be the ‘fest if there wasn’t a small (small) sting in the tail now, would it?
4:00 warm-down

Stages so far...

2011-02-25T05:36:00.000-08:00

The Giro is 2 stages in and things are getting as exciting as riding indoors on a tuesday morning can possibly get! The sufferfest

Stage 1 "fight club,"saw us riding 4 laps of to footage of the 2009 Wold Championship Road Race and featured very aggressive racing! The riders started each lap with a 4 min TT effort to break away from the pack. The real hurting came during an short 4 min climbing effort. Everyone got a brief recovery to some footage of a mountain descent before lather, rinse, repeat. In addition to the course, stage 1 also saw 23 spirited attack from a very aggressive piece of footage of the Italian national team. Riders had to respond to each one with a hard surge, and that clip was relentless! It would attack anywhere on the course, stalking us until we thought we were safe!

Stage 2 "angels," took us into the mountains for a climbing themed stage. We had some warmup to footage of velodrome pacelining, complete with pulls at the front of the group. The stage started off with 10 minutes of over/unders, brief intervals above and below threshold effort to warm up the legs. The real meat of the stage was in the climbs! We faced an 8 minute climbing effort 3 times. Each climb featured footage of a different pro, which demanded different tactics to stay in contact. We climbed in Leige-Bastogne, paris-nice, and the Dauphine against the likes of contador and schleck. Some climbs were steady grinds, others demanded surges.

Its been great to see folks turning up for the stages each week. Its been a steady crew of racers who brave the early wakeup to come and train. All have put in good efforts and report ravenous appetite the rest of the day. The workouts, downloaded from CB team sponsor TheSufferfest.com have all been tough, about as tough as you could do in an hour and still get effective training. Im not sure what the other tenants of the brewery think of the techno-rock blasting early in the morning, but so far there have been no complaints.

Much thanks to Bikes-not-Bombs for hosting the event and the Cambridge Bicycle Racing Team for producing it.

Stage 2, Tuesday Feb 22

2011-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Stage 2 is on for Tomorrow morning!

This weeks stage is "Angels" from thesufferfest. The music is less Techno and more Alt-rock than last week. This is a climbing workout, with the focus on 8 minute climbing intervals. This workout features everyone's favorite spanish beef inspector and current former Tour champ Alberto Contador as well as the Jungle Cat-like Andy Schleck.

Full workout details and preview below. As we did last week, doors will be open at 6:30am, folks can setup and warmup to entertaining youtube/vimeo clips of bike racing, we will start the main workout before 7am. We will be wrapping up by 8am.

Plenty of parking in the brewery lot or on the surrounding streets. As always, donations to support BNB programing are appreciated! (come on, they are letting us stink up their offices every week!)

If you were eating lunch, 8 minutes wouldn’t seem like a lot of time. If you were relaxing on a beach, it would be cruel to only be there 8 minutes. If you were doing one of the 8 minute climbs in Angels, you’d swear to every god you can think of that it’s never going to end, that time has slowed down dramatically and that you’d rather chop your legs off than go through another second of that 8 minute eternity. You know, we waited a while to create a Sufferfest dedicated to climbing because we didn’t have the perfect blend of workout, footage and music. But we’ve finally created it here. Something you’re probably not going to be too pleased to hear. But, if you want climbing and the kind of agony that makes you really, really, really fast…..you’ve got it. What other cycling dvd anywhere pits you against 3x Tour de France Winner Alberto Contador (and giro winner, and Vuelta winner, and and), puts you in a break with Luis Leon Sanchez or asks you to stay with Andy Schleck when he makes his winning move in the 2009 Liege-Bastogne-Liege?

The Workout

You want details? Here they are. This is what Angels delivers in just slightly over 60 minutes:

6:30 warm-up, featuring footage from track racing in San Diego
10:00 of over/under intervals, with 1:00 just above your threshold, and 1:00 just below threshold, repeated 5x. Featuring footage from the 2009 Paris-Nice when Alberto Contador got, gasp, dropped by just about everyone!
3:00 rest, featuring some beautiful descending footage from cyclefilm.com, effort level 4/10.
8:00 climbing, while you try to stay with Andy Schleck in the 2009 Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Effort level starts at about 7/10, attacks take you up near 9/10, until setting down to 7/10 for most of the rest.
4:00 rest with more descending, effort level 4/10.
8:00 climbing, with a gradually increasing pace up the famous Col d’Eze in the 2010 Paris-Nice, featuring Vockler, Contador, Sanchez…yeah, all the big boys. You do the first two minutes at 6/10, next two at 7/10, next two at 8/10 and the last two at 8.5/10. There are a few accelerations in the group that ask you to increase cadence without increasing effort….which can be a little tricky, as you’ll find out.
4:00 rest with more descending, effort 4/10.
8:00 climbing, with the freaking mother of all climbs: Alpe d’Huez…can you stay with Contador in the 2010 Dauphine-Libere? You start the climb bridging up to the break with an effort level of 8/10. Then you pretty much do 8/10 the whole way up. Oh, wait, I forgot about the bajillion attacks that push you so far into the red that you’d swear your eyes are bleeding.
4:00 warm down featuring a sort of motley arrangement of things to keep you entertained. Including the first Sufferfest xtranormal video. Oh boy.

Stage 1

2011-02-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Stage 1 will be held at the Bikes-Not-Bombs Hub in Jamaica Plain on Tuesday Feb 15 at 6:30AM.

This stage will feature a good warmup, and then we jump right into the pain with "Fight Club" from thesufferfest.com.

All "competitors" should bring;

-a bike (duh)
-a trainer
-bottle and towel, if thats your jam
-courage
-a $5 bill to donate to BNB for hosting the event. (optional)

Whats the workout?

Im so glad you asked...

Fight Club is scrappy, messy, and unpredictable. Like a real bike race, you’re working hard to stay with the leaders, while fending off attacks and doing your best to make the race by attacking as well. This is the only cycling workout video featuring officially licensed footage from the UCI 2009 Road World Championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland. You’ll be racing with – and against – Cancellara, Evans, Kolobnev, Cunego, Gilbert, Wiggins, Martin and more!

Workout Details

The Fight Club workout was designed to build power over longer durations, while increasing leg-speed through 23 (!) unannounced ‘attacks’ that will challenge you to accelerate and then recover while still making a massive effort. And to make you wish you never heard of The Sufferfest. But we won’t take that personally. Here’s what you’ll get over the roughly 60 minutes:

5 minutes warm-up featuring video footage from a ride along the Yaara river in Melbourne, Australia from Ride By Shooting.
Five ‘laps’ of racing, featuring footage from the UCI 2009 World Championship Time Trial and Road Race:
- 1st lap:
  - 6:00 of tempo riding, with a few attacks to break up the field
  - 1:00 recovery
- 2nd – 5th lap:
  - 4:00 time trial effort (with more attacks!)
  - 2:30 climbing (with even more surprise attacks!)
  - 3:00 recovery (no attacks – we’re cruel, but not that cruel), featuring footage from Cyclefilm’s descent of the Col du Glandon
5 minute warm-down featuring some footage from the UCI Artistic Cycling championships. It’s really got to be seen to be believed.

We should wrap up around 8am.

Presented by Bikes-not-Bombs and Cambridge Bicycle