>I have downloaded another Sufferfest turbo session – Angels. Like The Hunted (my review here) it involves some sustained efforts. This is why I’ve started with these two – I don’t want too many short, sharp efforts at this time of the year.
Which is not to say that Angels is easy – oh no. After a warm up (in the line at San Diego velodrome) you do ten minutes of over/under intervals to ‘open your lungs’. The nice thing about this section is the footage from the 2010 Paris-Nice where you ‘drop’ Contador.
There’s a respite and then you are into three eight minute climbing efforts with four minutes rest between. Each effort has a different character, both onscreen (Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Nice and Dauphine-Libere) and in terms of the intermediate instructions (full details on the link above). The final ascent of Alpe d’Huez feels brutal with several attacks to cover.
It certainly makes the hour go quickly. The script is involving and the text prompts come at the right moments to urge you on. Despite my efforts to scale the power back to where I’m supposed to be in my training programme, the race scenarios push you to try just a little bit harder than you might want to. If your motivation is low, these videos will help to push you further. Another excellent product for under a tenner.
I’ll wait until later in the year before I consider more downloads, but I glad I’ve bought these two. They’ve certainly maintained my interest through a difficult phase of training.
Lance Woodman 