As we finish this year’s Tour, it is time once again to reflect on our experiences.
I will start out with my traditional post:
To all those who started, even if they did not finish, to all who finished, however they finished:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Great words from Theodore.
For what it’s worth I enjoyed this year’s tour more than last year (which was my 1st). This year was made harder by being really busy at work and having late night rides and a day with 2 ride’s because I needed to get ahead as I couldn’t do one on the scheduled day - the benefits of a 50 hour window.
I love the Wahoo workouts as there’s always something to do. I particularly like the Mike Cotty workouts - not only great workouts but so informative and fab scenery. Still can’t understand how he stands in the climbs for so long. Mixed in with sufferfest and some of the weeks with - what’s not to like about the suffering
The tour was OK. Stage 1 was definitely the hardest for me. I get that they are trying to expose everyone to the different types of workout platforms throughout the app. It would be interesting to see the stats of what everybody is riding. I’m a long lover of Sufferfest so going forward I hope they continue to include and develop these workouts for future tours. That being said everyday above ground is a blessing. We are fortunate to enjoy our fitness pursuits and raise money for a truly worthy cause!
I think it was a good Tour. Hard enough for us who have a job and family to take care of. I really enjoyed doing all out on the Stelvio (in Level mode) as a last stage (doing it in Erg would’ve been a too easy finale).
It is obvious the Tour was ”window dressing” for the Wahoo package - Suff, ProRide, On location, RGT… Hopefully Wahoo will have more confidence next year to create a tour not only to sell their (great) product.
Suggestion: Create two tours. Wahooligan Tour and Tour of Sufferlandria. Wahooligan Tour for “the masses” and ToS a little bit more extreme and maybe with select entrance (conditional entry based on what you have done on the platform).
I think that’s a very fair observation. Although enjoyable, I didn’t find it as much of a challenge.
I liked that in ToS only a very select group could finish at 100%. I certainly was not part of that group and followed the “just get me through it” version and even struggled with that.
This year it wasn’t an issue at all to ride all of them at 100%. In fact, I rode the Stelvio for a second time to properly empty out.
I would share these views. This was my 11th tour and I did not find it very hard. In 2021 and 2022 I did the ToS at 100%, something I had not been able to do previously. I have always looked forward to The Sufferfest rides but this year I did two videos I had not done before (Tour de Suisse 2 and the Portugal OL ones) and enjoyed those so I think mixing up the types of rides offered on SYSTM is good. But the brutality of previous year’s ToSes made for entertaining banter on Facebook!
I agree that this year’s Tour was ‘window dressing’ for Wahoo. Unfortunately it didn’t feel like it went much deeper than that. The planning, timing and build up of the tour was rather weak. Yes, they showcased some of their great videos but it was overall a disappointment IMHO. The spirit that accompanied past Tours of Sufferlandria was clearly missing. Change is often good but the uniqueness, suffering and good natured banter was noticeably absent. No daily broadcasts from Tasmania with Sir David and Sir Dylan (oh wait, they let him go) that always stoked the excitement and brought more money for DPF. Topping it off was a very anti-climatic, poorly planned Day 7. As one of the old guard Knights, I worry whether the Tour will survive in its present form. I will likely find other ways to support DPF and carry on in that Orange world in the meantime.
I found this tour significantly easier than my previous two tours, especially today. I felt the need to turn up the intensity of today’s final ride, and read that many chose to add a second ride.
Next year’s tour needs to be more challenging to capture my interest.
My vote would be to bring back the nuclear, focused, and “just get me through it” options - which would allow people with different training regiments to choose what is best suited for them while also enabling GvA to make the nuclear option almost unobtainable.
Yes. And, as the only non KoS so far in this thread, as a mere mortal I concur that this is the first tour where I haven’t had sore legs after the first couple stages. And I used to do the Get me through it option. This year felt more like an ON week from my usual winter 12-weeks SUF training plan than a Tour.
This was my first tour an I really enjoyed it. It worked out for me. But I surely hit less watts, than most of the other people here.
Showcasing the range of workouts worked for me as well, since my “Customerjourney” (as we say in marketing) with Wahoo was the following.
Wahoo Element Roam and TickR X (2 years no thoughts of indoor cycling)
Tired of intensive bike care, while riding in the winter, so afforded a Kickr Bike
KickrBike had a huge “wahooligan” branding but no further link within the unboxing experience towards Wahoo X and Wahoo RGT
Ended up at Zwift immediately
Somehow got curious about all the other Wahoo apps
Tried out RGT as an alternative to Zwift
Wahooligan Tour caught my attention, as well as DPF
Without the Tour probably wouldn’t have tried out all the stuff out there (fascinated by the culture clash and devotion to Sufferland. Entertaining and very inspiring!)
Considering to leave Zwift.
My learning: structured workouts with videos definately beat riding along a virtual road.
Grateful for the experience. Thanks to this forum!
I enjoyed the tour I really liked that all of the Systm channels (except for the non-vids^^) were used for the Tour. For me, this showed how far the app has come since the old Sufferfest days.
As suggestions for improvement: I think it would be good if there were different “levels” (nuclear, etc.) again, so that everyone can pick their personal suffering target.
I don’t really care about the time of the tour (just like the name), but can understand that for many March is a very late date for an indoor tour.
I enjoyed the variety, clearly the Tour was designed to showcase the range of workouts (Suff, On Location, RGT, Pro Ride, A Week With). Can also see that making the tour a little easier and two days shorter potentially opens it up to more participants, which I’d imagine would be good to preserve / boost volume of users thus longevity of / continued investment in the platform by Wahoo.
But, I agree with other posts that the sense of community, that we’ve had in the past on Tour of Suff, was missing; and I had the RGT app (of which I was a fan) crash twice which is not good (never had the Systm nor Zwift apps crash and Suff app just once in several years of use).
The wahooligan tour was good overall. Less brutal than last year however on reflection I think I enjoyed the experience more.
Last year I went into the final couple of days excited to finish, mentally tired and physically sore. Day 7 I cracked half way through blender and did an hour of fairly miserable riding to the line. Yesterday I rode up a virtual stelvio with a few hundred other people (and someone else’s music) and actually felt more of a community than previously.
So yeah it was a different but I don’t think it was worse. 12 months till the next one.
C’mon Buttons, the first 4 posts on this thread don’t appear to be KoS either. Do I sense decal envy . I think there’s some decals somewhere with your name on it
Imho, I’d be SHOCKED if The Company brought back Nuclear/Focused/GMTI options. Fwiw, if anyone is reading this, I think the same thing could be achieved by just adding additional/optional challenges.
Not unlike what I did by adding Stage 7b, the full, level mode, slog of a climb up RGT’s Passo Dello Stelvio as an add-on to Stage 7a. Nick Price (not on the forums but on FB) did each stage twice in his Double Nuclear tour again this year. @JonEbGood added a couple of stages and some intensity to existing ones in Fluffy’s GRRand Tour of Sufferlandria 2023.
Something along these lines could be “suggested” for all those looking for more of a challenge. That way, The Tour (a name I hope The Company will adopt over that GvA awful name they landed on) can still be completed by nearly everyone, yet it can be given an extra level of challenge for anyone inclined to push themselves just a little bit further.
The Company can learn from this. Give everyone the same official tour, and give anyone looking for more, a little (or a lot) more.
This was my 4th Tour, so I have participated in the transition from the 9 Stage Sufferfest beatdown in 2020 (final stage Power Station+Angels+Thin Air!!!) to this year’s 7 Stage Wahoo Tour. I miss great posters (massive understatement) and the ride along videos with the gang in Australia. The vibe is definitely not the same, but it is what it is. No sense in going line by line through all of the issues we had this year, as everyone is doing the best they can with what they have.
I did up my numbers right before this tour, so this year was not easy by any stretch. I also had my donors suggest off the bike “lagniappe” workouts, which included planks (1 sec for each dollar donated-385 seconds!!), 50 burpees in a row and other dumb things which left me sore and tired. That was a fun twist and one I will likely continue for future tours.
The biggest positive difference for me this year is one of my donors has had several family members directly and indirectly impacted by Parkinson’s. Nothing stops the whining about Wahoo quicker than realizing what the Davis Phinney Foundation is all about. That was a major motivating factor for me, driving me to hit the stages at 100% where I could and as hard as I could go where I couldn’t.
I agree with your sentiments! The Tour is not about us anyway, but if we are lucky we get to have a little fun along the way.
I hope Wahoo is paying attention to the issues that occured during the Tour and works to resolve them. It will take time though and we should remember that events IRL have lots of issues too.
Third tour for me, and my favorite of them. Based on the timing and difficulty change, I take this reimagined tour also as more of a transition week into more outdoor riding. I expect to get a good fitness bump without having been burned into a hole that even a focused ToS would leave me in. I typically do 350 TSS/wk, so I could see how folks with more volume could see this as too easy.
I did the 5pm EDT US Stage 7 ride which had like 15 folks and about 6 of us were active on voice chat which 2as more enjoyable than just doing it solo in SYSTM. I ride and race on RGT a couple times per week but this was my first time doing a workout on there and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Gave up on erg mode after about 35 min since even in the lowest gear I’d be way over power target most of the time trying to match cadence.
To celebrate I let my inner Couchlandrian out a bit with some fresh cinnamon rolls, though TBH dealing with the sugar rush was almost as uncomfortable as Stage 6
My first Tour of Sufferlandria was 2019, so I am a relatively new Sufferlandrian, but I loved the challenge of the nine day event in 2019 and 2020. I rode double stages in those years to create a rest day in case I broke myself, but the enthusiasm of the Sufferlandrian community kept me so engaged that I just finished in eight days both years.
As a resident of Michigan, with its long shoulder seasons, I would like to see the ToS return to February and the wahoolimabob tour move to the late fall as a reintroduction to indoor riding. I know that would not work for everyone, but maybe wahoo could include optional outdoor rides as part of a fall waholimabob tour
In previous tours I have been completely wasted just doing the tour. This year I managed the tour plus taking 48hours out for work stuff and also getting in 3 rides outside.
Living in the northern hemisphere I’d echo @Heretic in that it is too late in the year. No later than the end of Feb please!
While it was nice to showcase the content across the platform, I also wonder if the tour might be better organised as a suite of tours with one for each channel (Sufferlandria, On Location, ProRides etc) and use that structure to allow everyone to choose a tour suites to their level and personal goals (and there could even be a super-nuclear option to ride all tours simultaneously ;-)).
I really liked that all of the Systm channels (except for the non-vids^^) were used for the Tour. For me, this showed how far the app has come since the old Sufferfest days.
. I think there’s some decals somewhere with your name on it 
