Best 100 Miles Long Ride Videos (to repeat)

[emacdoug]

I’m currently doing the Metric Century training plan, tho I ended up already completing my 100km ride 3 weeks ago during the prescribed 3.5 hour training ride.

So, instead of doing another 100km ride this weekend, I’m 95% sure I’m going to try to do a Full Century ride of 100 miles.

Yes, indoors.
Yes, on my trainer.
Yes, that’s currently my only option.
Yes, I’ve done all my outdoor training rides inside on my trainer, too.

For most of my previous long endurance rides, I’ve used the Endurance+ workout. However, it has no video and no music. I’ve done these rides while listening to my own music and for a couple rides I did it while watching a stage of the TDF. But, I don’t want to do that for my 100 mile attempt. It gets really dull riding switching between the 10 minute power in Endurance+. And I get no lap splits (except when I pause and rewind it). Last week I did 2.5 hours while riding Open 120 and just paused it and did a rewind to get me the extra 30 minutes. At least I had a video, but there is still no music.

So, what is a good video to use for a long ride attempt? I know I will have to rewind it multiple times. But at least I will have video and music, and various splits. And I will also need to ride it reduced. “It Seemed Like Thin Air (mash-up)” Seems like the best option since it’s 2:28. I don’t think I want to do “Kitchen Sink (Mash-Up)” since it’s mostly harder intervals, even tho it’s 2:59 and it’ll be a reduced intensity. But, maybe a reduced intensity will work good for that?

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[JamesT]

How about all of them? Or as many as it takes to achieve your goal.

And/or substitute it for a Knighthood ride

I did an imperial century made up of all the short interval videos once. That was fun . I didn’t enjoy my “all the climbing videos” one anywhere near as much. But each to their own for those choices.

[Martin]

My thought as I was reading this was to do some back to back …keeps it all fresh, and you’re doing the effort irrespective.
Of course you can just rewind a video from time to time - in which case it doesn’t matter which one you do. I guess you just have to pick an appropriate reduced percentage after a while and keep going.

I’m with @JamesT on on the knighthood thing … I assume you’re doing about 6hrs here? That right?
6/10ths of the way there then … add another four lol

[Sir_RobW]

It seemed like thin air is hands down one of the hardest videos out there. I have found that I do more miles with ISLTA than Kitchen Sink even though KS is 30 min longer.

I would rather do more than one video and not bother to rewind, just ride until you hit the 100miler. Just make sure that you have something like a Garmin / Polar or whatever else that can go the whole way, otherwise you’ll have lots of shorter distances and not a total 100 miler

[melibokus]

Nothing is going to match Sufferfest except for the long multi-hour endurance rides we’d rather be doing outdoors IMHO but staying interested on the longer indoor rides are their own kind of challenge.

My thoughts are Sufferfest Everything playlist on Spotify and one of the FulGaz videos. It is first person perspective so you can try and fool yourself you are outside. You could use Open 120 and just play one of the videos on a loop or allow FulGaz to drive the trainer. I know that is another subscription to another service but the variation keeps things interesting.

Other things I’ve tried are movies, just music alone, zwift but eventually these get a little repetitive or boring for me when on the trainer. I do plan to give RGT a try this winter for more variety too.

I don’t want to use Sufferfest videos for this because I want to save those. I’m even paranoid of overplaying the music on that spotify playlist

[emacdoug]

How about all of them? Or as many as it takes to achieve your goal.

Maybe it’s my OCD, but the reason I’m not looking to do a playlist is because I want it to be all one ride and not a compilation of smaller rides - which is largely why I’m looking at rewinding the same video over and over. I’ve done this with Endurance+ (90 min) and had to rewind it twice for my 100km ride (3 hours 55 min).

And/or substitute it for a Knighthood ride

I did consider this. But, ultimately I want to do them separately and similarly as above, I want the 100miles to be all one ride.

I’m with @JamesT on on the knighthood thing … I assume you’re doing about 6hrs here? That right?
6/10ths of the way there then … add another four lol

Maybe I’m a masochist, but I’m looking at doing the 100 miler, then doing the KOS training plan, and then doing my Knighthood attemp.

It seemed like thin air is hands down one of the hardest videos out there. I have found that I do more miles with ISLTA than Kitchen Sink even though KS is 30 min longer.

I would rather do more than one video and not bother to rewind, just ride until you hit the 100miler. Just make sure that you have something like a Garmin / Polar or whatever else that can go the whole way, otherwise you’ll have lots of shorter distances and not a total 100 miler

Actually, I’ve done the opposite of this for the Ironman VR races. When I had a long Sufferfest workout on my training plan I’d use my watch to record my ride so that I could cut the recording short to use for the VR race while still recording the whole workout to fulfill my SUF training plan. What I’ve found, tho, is that the distance on my Garmin ends up being shorter than the distance SUF reports. It did that when I was using my dumb trainer and a Wahoo speed sensor and also on my Core. Not sure what’s up with that. Would suck to hit 100 miles in SUF videos and still have my Garmin telling me I need to ride an additional 5!

ISLTA is definitely a beast. I did 44 miles on that one earlier this year and my knees were not happy at the end. Was my longest ride until I got into the meat of the Metric Century training plan. If I did that as a 100 miler, I’d definitely need to tone it down a few %'s. But that’s probably what I’m leaning towards.

I did consider doing it on Zwift so I could do a long open-ended ride, but what I like about SUF is that it’s giving me actual miles based on the speed I’m going instead of Zwift’s estimated distances based on the virtual terrain.

Seems like it should be so simple. lol. Maybe I’m thinking too hard about it.

I appreciate all the feedback. Is there anything I’m not considering that I should be?

I’m leaning towards repeats of ISLTA probably starting around 80-85% and then dropping it down if I need to.

[emacdoug]

So, to follow up… I successfully completed my 100 mile attempt, this morning!

I did end up using “It Seemed Like Thin Air”. I did it on 80% in Level 2 (no way was I doing this in ERG mode). It ended up being nearly perfect. The end of the first time through was hard, but I was mostly thinking about how hard it was going to be the second time through. Still. The first time I did this video was back in April or May during my very first training plan and I managed to do 44 miles while riding the video at 100%. Today, on 80%, I managed to do 45 miles on the first pass and 43 miles on the second.

The second time through was definitely harder than the first. My legs didn’t respond as quickly. It took me at least a second or two longer to build up to the target power, and a second or two longer to stand up when it told me to. And I did skip a couple of those - partially because I was on 80% and every time I stood it was hard to keep my power from way overshooting the target power. Sometimes standing up helped me get back up to target power when I was suffering and drifting too low. But sometimes I would be in a good rhythm and standing would throw me off my rhythm.

My legs were definitely tired the end of the second time through the video. but, once I hit 93 miles, I definitely was starting to crack. I had to push through a few points where my legs gave our briefly. And it may have actually been lucky for me that I dropped my chain when in the 25 gear a couple times in the last few minutes because it gave me a few seconds of rest while I managed to ride my chain back onto the big ring on the front. Shortly after the 2nd or 3rd time in a row and switched to the small ring and a middle gear in the back. For some reason that was mentally harder than the big ring and the 25 gear. I don’t know why.

OMG. And at the very end of the 40 minute climb at the end, when you have an uphill sprint finish against The Shark! This screen would come up and BOTH times - even on the second time through when I was at 87 total miles - I somehow managed to squeeze out 260w for the build up and then old over 400w in the sprint (that’s a lot for me, lol). It was a crazy intense rush of energy and euphoria. And then BOTH times I ended up sobbing into a towel for the next minute for no other reason whatsoever.

Oh! And one of my favorite other video moments is a few minutes before on that same climb. I can’t help but laugh out loud when Kruijswijk and the two other riders all simultaneously look back at Nibali and the video pauses and they say “STOP PLAYING THAT STUPID MUSIC EVERYTIME YOU CATCH BACK UP TO US!” It totally throws off my concentration when I’m working hard at the end of that climb, yet I love it and can’t help but laugh every time.

I do have one small yet big request, tho. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature… lol, but… I was at 99.3 total miles and rolling up to finish the full 100. And I was planning to take a picture of the screen showing 99.9 miles and send it to my dad and say “Done!” And then send him a text a compute minutes later saying “just kidding!” with another pic a couple minutes later of it showing the full 100 miles. HOWEVER. I couldn’t do this because shortly after I hit 99.5 miles… the screen rolled over to round up and show 100 miles. Not only that, but it also doesn’t show the decimal places once you hit 100 miles. Sooo… I actually ended up riding until the screen shows 101 miles which turned out to be 100.58 miles to make sure I actually for real didn’t end up riding only 99.6 miles. This really should be changed, IMO. 1) Don’t round up to 100 when you hit 99.5 or 99.6 miles, and 2) Please keep the decimal when you hit 100 miles!

But, anyway, other than that, and cracking multiple times with only 7 miles to go, it was great! I got down 3 or 4 times to grab more drinks, but only for like 5 seconds since my trainer is in the garage right in front of the spare fridge. Other than that I only stopped once to change my socks. Despite drinking and eating a ton, I never had to stop for a break. Which reminds me, I need to get something to drink, right now.

[emacdoug]

Oh, and about 48 minutes in there’s a song that comes on with piano music in it. And it always reminds me to do my elements of style checks and wiggle my fingers along with the piano to make sure I’m relaxed.