‘Well done thou good and faithful servant…’
2 Likes
Awesome effort. Particularly impressed by finishing with Blender. Top suffering!
4 Likes
We bow our heads in admiration, respect, and awe. A donation in your honor for the people of Sudan, who are suffering in a different kind of torment, will be made through a local organization.
6 Likes
While I was in the middle of riding my quest, my son came in to tell me something funny he saw in a Disney documentary he was watching. Someone talking about the development of Space Mountain said:
“Fear minus death equals fun.”
And I thought that perfectly described not just The Sufferfest but also riding a Knighthood quest.
10 Likes
Yes, that is awesome. Sums it up well.
3 Likes
Way to suffer Sir @emacdoug you’re truly an inspiration to all and a true Sufferlandrian. For that we salute you and may you suffer no more, until your next ride of curse. IWBMATTKYT
8 Likes
How about saluting his acheivement with some properly remastered SUF videos? 
nudge nudge
Or even some well made new ones!! 
4 Likes
Wow. just Wow.
1 Like
Nearly forgot to submit the form. GvA would NEVER forgive me for that! But thankfully, former minion Dame Ellisa commented on my fb post and I was reminded and duly chastened. Can’t have quest number six end up as unofficial!
Now I will hopefully get my post-ride report written up and posted in the next week or so. Maybe I’ll get it posted on Monday… 
9 Likes
Sir @emacdoug , now you need to create something like this to commemorate your achievements and decorate your Pain Cave.
12 Likes
That looks brilliant! 
1 Like
I did get myself one new gift after my knighthood.
After my first I bought myself a custom Knights sweatband from BondiBand. But over the years it’s been fading to a dark grey. So, I bought two new ones.
My original:
Replacements:
12 Likes
Noice!!
1 Like
Well, I’ve been trying for almost 2 weeks to write up my post-ride report. But so far I’ve been so busy I can barely breathe. So, haven’t gotten much. And when I did try to write it was almost all introduction and backstory. And I’m really bad at spending way too much time on the backstory. So I began trying to pare it down.
But then as I thought about it, I realized this KOS out of all my quests is really all about the backstory. This was the one that was delayed and the one I wasn’t sure was even going to happen up until the moment it did.
So, hopefully in the next week or so, I will get at least some of that out of my head for you all to read. If you want to.
8 Likes
There’s always another Monday for everything Sir 
3 Likes
Speaking of making a knighthood official… Still waiting for my decals (er, stickers) and my letter from GvA. Wouldn’t be the first time I had one lost in the mail. I hear mail service from Agonia is a bit, uh… irregular.
2 Likes
No decals before post ride report
2 Likes
I’ve got the introduction written. It’s lengthy, as usual. Lol.
I may have to post it in sections as I write it, again. 
2 Likes
By the time you get it done, it will be time to start Quest #7.
2 Likes
Sooo… it’s been almost exactly a fully month since my Knighthood attempt. Actually, I’ve been so busy and so much has happened that it feels much longer than that, and I’m genuinely surprised it’s only be 30 days. With the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife getting sick, and then just being swamped with work and family events, I’ve barely had time to breathe, much less type up a coherent narrative. So, now that I have time off for the Christmas and New Years holidays, I finally have time to sit and collect my thoughts. So, without further delay, here is (edit: the first installment of) my long-delayed* post-KOS write-up.
*I would call it long-anticipated, but that sounds much too presumptuous as I have no claim to your or anyone else’s inner-thoughts.
A Long Introduction
As I started to write this up a couple weeks ago, I of course began with what was forming up to be a very lengthy introduction full of backstory. I then immediately began paring it back because really, who cares about the backstory, and I am fully aware than overly detailed and tedious build-ups are one of my downfalls. But then as I progressed, I realized that this of all my KOS attempts was more about the journey getting to the attempt than the actual attempt itself. So, with an attempt at a lesser amount of self-censorship, here is my likely excessive and likely redundant introduction. In fact, the intro will likely be the longest portion. But, in any case, here we go…
November 2024 was supposed to be the year for my 5th quest. But after my dad passed away the end of Feb 2023 I ended up doing 2 that year - one en memoriam in August 2023 (my 4th), and then another at the beginning of December 2023 (my 5th). So that meant November 2024 was now going to be my 6th quest. But that was not to be as at the beginning of September (2024) I contracted Covid for the first time. Not only that, but it then turned into Long Covid. I won’t delve into the full details (I have a thread dedicated to my long medical saga if you really want to learn more) but suffice to say I began 2025 without the expectation of any knighthood attempt at all.
It took me at least 6 months before I felt that a 2025 Knighthood was even possible. I took all of September 2024 off to recover. And after attempting to begin my return to training in October I instead began suffering from Long Covid in earnest. I took many weeks off at a time and did nothing more than easy spinning and walking for the next few months to try to allow my body to recover while also enduring a lengthy “hurry-up-and-wait” series of medical tests and appointments that ultimately revealed very little. I was apparently as healthy as I could be and yet not all at the same time.
My April 2025 post-tour shennanigans of riding the entire Knighthood eligible Sufferfest library was my first real foray back into the realm of proper suffering. What that glimmer of hope, I became optimistic of a November Knighthood attempt for the first time.
It was a long and winding road, not without additional twists and turns. But, by the end of October I felt like I was close to at least feeling ready to at least attempt a quest. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to complete it. But I was at least in reasonable shape to give it a try. I was definitely not even close to the best KOS-shape I’ve ever been in. But I figured I would make Grunter proud and give it my best college try; and if this would be the first quest I failed to finish then it wouldn’t be for my lack of trying. I doubled down on my training for the first two weeks of November and then started my taper, fingers firmly crossed.
Just 5 days before my quest was to be performed, my wife began feeling ill. At first it seemed like only allergies, but by Thursday it became obvious she had caught an actual virus. Through some good hygenie, good fortune, and some divine luck, I woke up healthy on Friday morning for Rue Day.
Picking My Playlist
I have ridden all the originally eligible Sufferfest workouts over the course of all my previous KOS quests, so the question was which I would choose to ride during this one. With so many videos removed, de-suffered, or remastered to various states of existence, I removed those to narrow my options. That pared them down to only the 13 workouts that still existed (which eliminated Defender, Butter, The Trick, etc) and had not been recently Wahoo remastered (which eliminated many more). Had I tried to ride the playlist from my original KOS quest, only 7 of those still even existed, and only 4 of those 7 remain un-remastered. So, my available choices was this abbreviated list:
- 14 Vise Grips
- Blender
- Fight Club
- Hell Hath No Fury
- Nine Hammers
- Revolver
- Team Scream
- The Bat
- The Best Thing in the World
- The Chores
- The Omnium
- The Rookie
- The Shovel
KOS playlists are a very personal decision, but there is definitely some well-founded logic that’s been developed by the cumulative experience of so many knights. Although what that, I’ve found that the videos that work best for me are the interval workouts which provide frequent recovery periods. The worst periods of my previous attempts were when I strung together too many endurance or race-simulation rides with very little recovery, especially late in the attempt. So with that in mind I began to build aout my playlist.
One idea I had early on but had never fully realized was the silliness of riding Igniter as a “warm-up” ride. While that may make sense in training, it lacks all logic for a KOS attempt which isn’t exactly logical in the first place, amiright? I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish this one. So what better time for such shenannigans?
So, great. I’d settled on my warm-up but I still didn’t have a first video yet.
I started by very first KOS with The Bat which is a great mental training ride and an excellent way to start off. But I just wasn’t feeling it. So….
[to be continued…]
14 Likes