Jen’s Lockdown Turbo Training with Sufferfest!

I have to say I never expected us to be writing about turbo training.  I thought we had left that far behind, but here we are!  As many of you know, we are locked down in Tenerife during this pandemic.  The Spanish government have put in some very strict restrictions on movement.  We aren’t allowed out to exercise at all at the moment and we are now 3 weeks in, since the 14th March. It’s just been announced, this will continue until April 26th (at least).  It is working here though, our infection levels are coming right down and our hospitals are coping OK at the moment so hopefully we’ll be able to get back out again soon.

Luckily, a few years ago the Sky team gave us two turbo trainers, as we’d help them out on one of their training camps.  One we leave here, and one in France, just in case we have some wet days etc. So we dusted it off and off we went.

The first week that we were locked down, we had Dominic Cox and Sarah his wife staying with us and Dominic kindly introduced us to Sufferfest.  We did also consider Zwift but the turbo we have is not a smart trainer we don’t have cadence and speed meters etc. I have to say Sufferfest has been great, some great workouts and videos to keep you entertained.

“…it took my body a bit of time to get used to pedaling continuously throughout the workout!”

I used to do a lot of interval training on the turbo over the winter, when I was racing, but haven’t used it earnest for over 10 years now.  To be honest it was a bit of a shock to the system.  The first week it took my body a bit of time to get used to pedaling continuously throughout the workout.  That might seem an odd thing to say, but when you training on the road you do spend quite a bit of the workout freewheeling, especially if you train in a area with lots of climbing and descending. They do say an hour on the turbo is worth an hour an half on the road!

Then also I had to adapt to the heat, you forget how much you sweat on the turbo and how the heat effects your performance.  Fortunately the first couple of weeks it’s been a bit cooler here so that has helped, especially as we don’t have any fans and can’t buy any at the moment! It’s getting hotter again now so the body is having to adapt again.

We thought you might like to hear what training we have been doing and how we have adapted things.

What training have I been doing?

I came into the lockdown a bit tired and I’ve had two flu like periods of being ill, which have knocked me for six for 2-3 weeks each time.  I also knew I have been neglecting doing some more top end 2-3 min intervals this winter.  I knew that my endurance was still good and I really didn’t want to spend ages on the turbo each day so I decided to have a bit more of a focus on my 3-5 min powers and 1 min powers. I also knew I had to be careful that I could start doing lots of hard turbo sessions and wind up over trained, just because they are short doesn’t mean they aren’t hard!

I’ve restructured my training week to look like this now:

• Monday – Intervals – working on 1 min to 5 min powers
• Tuesday – Sweet Spot aerobic endurance + Weights
• Wednesday – Sprint efforts – 5-20 secs
• Thursday – Recovery ride & Yoga
• Friday – Mixed top end session
• Saturday – Sweet Spot aerobic endurance + Weights
• Sunday – Recovery ride & Yoga

What Sufferfest workouts hae I been using for this?

Sufferfest has a lot of different workouts on it, something like nearly 100!  Some of them are No Video workouts, some of them are a collaboration with GCN and the rest are ones with either racing footage or a collaboration with the Col Collective.  The reason for using Sufferfest for me, was to have some video to distract me so I’ve not used the No Video ones.  The only issue with this is, most of the longer endurance sessions and the more structured workouts are all no Video ones!

I get it though, really Sufferfest wasn’t designed to be used everyday and as the name of the company suggests, it was really more for doing those really harder sessions that aren’t always easy to do out on the road in an uncontrolled environment.  I don’t think they really expect their clients to do Sufferfest workouts everyday!

The GCN workouts tend to be more structured so I’ve been using a mixture of these and the video Sufferfest workouts.  For example:

• Monday – Butter, 14 Vise Grips, There is No Try

• Tuesday – GCN Endurance Ride – if I’m feeling good enough, repeating the last 20 mins so that I do x3 20 mins in total

• Wednesday – Violator – but repeating the first set twice and dropping sets 2 & 3

• Thursday – Recovery Spin (this is a no video one, but I can last 30 mins with a bit of Spanish improvement learning on my phone to accompany it!)
• Friday – Racing category workout, that is more free form like; Fight Club, Hell Hath no Fury, Angels, Rookie

• Saturday – GCN Endurance Ride – if I’m feeling good enough, repeating the last 20 mins so that I do x3 20 mins in total
• Sunday – Recovery Spin (this is a no video one, but I can last 30 mins with a bit of Spanish improvement learning on my phone to accompany it!)

I usually always do a longer warm down and sometimes a longer warm up too. Most of the cool downs are only 3 minutes which I don’t feel is enough for me. I like to do a good 8-10 mins warm down, particularly if it’s been a hard interval session.

What do I think overall of Sufferfest?

I like it.  I like the varied workouts, the videos. I like the way each workout shows you what area it works on, with the 5 second, 1 minute, 5 minute and 20 minute emphasis clearly colour coded (see the pictures above). It’s certainly kept me sane over the last 4 weeks!

Do I love it? I think I would love it, if it had some endurance rides tghat worked more on sweet spot, like the GCN one, with some Col Collective videos but I understand that I am using it in extreme circumstances and there is more than enough in all the workouts to get what you want, even if you do sections of some of them and repeat sections.  It’s certainly changed my mind about turbo training and maybe even after lockdown I might use it for 3-5min intervals…who knows!!

“I think a change is as good as a rest and now really quite enjoying the challenging workouts”

Hope your training goes well over the next few weeks and if you are totally locked down I hope this has given you some food for thought if you are struggling with being on the turbo

All the best Jen