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.”
Trying to do a ride involving Sir Standsalot before breakfast when you didn’t have much to eat the night before is going to end in tears
A pumping baseline can get you through a lot of things*
Highlights- Stage 7 because I knew it was over (I did actually do 9 stages but I did the extra ones during the week before the main Tour so I’m counting them and you can’t stop me)
Lowlights-About 30sec before I started Downward Spiral which I honestly didn’t know if I could complete
Sometime, I’m going to create playlists for all my favourites rides where the beat of the music matches the cadence targets**
** I am absolutely not going to do this. What will actually happen is I’ll maybe try, realise the reason they didn’t do this is because it’s crazy difficult and give up. To paraphrase the great Homer (Simpson), “If something’s too difficult, it’s probably not worth doing”
I also bought the official one too but I like this one better. I’m afraid I can’t remember who did this for the 2024 tour (i know it’s based on an older poster), so apologies on that front but Chapeau to whoever it was as I love it.
I came into this year having all but given up exercise for the last 7mths.
Seeing a proper Sufferlandrian Tour being planned provided serious motivation for me to get my backside in gear.
I’ve finished stronger than I thought I could, re-engaged with the community, revisited old and new favourites, and found my mojo along the way.
Thank you all and @Rupert.H, it’s exactly what we all needed
My thoughts on this year’s tour, worst ever. It just didn’t feel right and I just couldn’t get in to it. I managed to do all of the Sufferlandrian route at 100% except for the last ride. My performance on the added Whateveritis rides were hit and miss.
I did the last three years ‘live’. I have been doing a revival tour attempting to do all the past tours. I have just two remaining to do. I mention that because it has always seemed like a worthy challenge. This one just didn’t.
As I thought about it two things came to mind. Yes, coming from my mind is dubious at best (saving Sir Glen from having to point this out), but here goes.
First I feel like Sufferfest is getting devalued. Calling it the Sufferlandrian route instead of Sufferfest allowed them to throw in a couple of non-Sufferfest rides. No criticism of the rides, but it seems like this once great event is just not any more. If they continue to look past Sufferfest, as others have said, I am unlikely to remain on the platform.
Second, the whole name issue and the subsequent two options screams of hypocrisy to me. They have taken swift action to ‘correct’ things that a much smaller contingent of riders has found offensive, yet held fast here. Help me if I missed it, but where was the hue and cry to save the name so many felt offensive. If there was one, I missed it.
Bottom line for me, I did it. It did not engage me. I didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment having done it. It was a total miss for me.
I do agree with you about this. I do not know how the Facebook group is, but I definitely felt less energy here than before. Nonetheless, the core group of people still made it a lot of fun.
Great quotation @Heretic , and thanks for starting this thread…
It’s only my second Tour and it was very different to last year’s. Without posting a graph, Strava says this year was twice as hard as last year. Thanks to this year’s tour I was introduced to Blender which is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done on a turbo trainer.
It was a much bigger mental challenge this time round too.
It’s been great though to share the suffering with you wonderful lot. That’s been in the back of my mind in every single stage of the tour, that afterwards I can check in with this community that understands how hard it is and that laughs in the face of suffering.
I was lucky enough to win a prize this year. I find the tour to be good for reflecting on every time I do it. So here goes…
Doing both tours was silly. I’m not fit enough to do that.
One week after I finished, I’m still tired.
I’m going to have a go at becoming a Knight this year. I will finish my century plan, take a few months of riding consistently for fun over the summer, then start a 200 mile gravel plan and aim to do the KOS at the event ride at the end of that. Rose tinted glasses and all that…
I hope to return again next year for another tour.
I’ll need to figure out a slot in my schedule. I have a 100 mile ride coming up on April 7th. Then a few work and family trips… Maybe July 4th week will work out…
I have to post it publicly, so guess I’ll post it here in the forum when I decide on a date and ride schedule.
