Very nice. Welcome to the castle where everyone knows your pain. Your room is ready. You’ll love the bed, it’s SufferKing uncomfortable.
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Do not firget the paperwork! It’s still required.
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As someone who did this almost spur of the moment a few weeks ago…Bravo!!!
For years I put too much thought into it and it never ended up working out. Welcome to the Castle, you see Sir Glen got your bed ready, rest up now…you earned it!
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Welcome! I love this attitude of “let’s just do a KoS tomorrow”!
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Unfortunately my job doesn’t recognize Sufferlandrian citizenship. Between that, recovering, refueling, and doing the paperwork, I didn’t have time to revisit this till now. Here’s how it ended up going.
#1 TBTITW, #2 The Model, #3 Revolver: Nothing remarkable about these three. Started off at 75% intensity, and I felt like I could turn it up, but I figured I’d only do that if I still felt like it after 6 or 7, and stayed at 75%.
#4 Butter: My wife jumped on her bike and joined me for this one. It went fine as well, and was nice to have some company. Not feeling fresh anymore but still not difficult.
#5 Rue The Day: This one started to feel like actual work. I was starting to have temperature control issues, though - the room was getting warm, but if I opened the window to avoid overheating, the outdoor air was bothering my lungs (both cold air and exercise can trigger my asthma). Neither option was great, so I had to keep adjusting to figure out the least bad combo.
#6 The Omnium: Came pretty close to needing a bucket right at the start of this one, before it even got going, thanks to a coughing fit brought on by some food combined with the cold air. It pretty much put me off eating anything for the rest of the ride. I turned the intensity down to 70% as well given this one’s mostly above FTP. My wife got back on her bike to ride TBTITW and complete her April badge.
#7 Power Station: This was the worst individual ride of the day, thanks to the fact that I was running out of fuel after the previous ride’s incident and the outdoor air was cooling off further. Getting the pedals turning, even for the warmup, was rough. I forced down a clif bar and a pepperoni stick, though they took about 15 minutes each. Also, 3 minute efforts were a lot longer than I wanted to do at this point. And for some reason I turned the intensity back up to 75% for this ride.
#8 Do As You’re Told: Had a poor start and dropped back down to 70%. Halfway through, after listing off a bunch of foods and figuring out what I thought I could manage to eat, my wife made me a ‘calorie bomb’ smoothie which got me through this ride and the next.
#9 G.O.A.T.: I had originally planned to do this one at #7, but with how I was feeling after #6 I didn’t want to do any of the other options any later than necessary. Normally I enjoy the low cadence stuff, but a minor knee issue was threatening to turn into a major one, so I did the efforts in the 70-80 RPM range instead of the 50s to lower the force. I also had another near-bucket experience during the second effort in this ride, which marked the only time during the entire day that I stopped pedaling during a non-recovery or warmup interval.
#10 Violator: Despite all the hype, this one actually wasn’t so bad. Or rather, it was about as bad as Violator should be on any given day. I’d managed to get some calories in, the sun had gone down so the windows were closed, and short duration spikes are right up my alley, so despite being largely spent I still had… well, ‘fun’ might be a stretch, but at least the right kind of suffering. I put it in level mode for this one so I can’t really say what % it worked out to, but I was pleasantly surprised at some of the numbers I (briefly) managed after that much time on the bike.
Overall, I’m glad I did it. I’m also not in a hurry to do it again.
Some general thoughts:
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I’d planned out clothing, hydration, and food. Clothing and hydration went well, food kinda got derailed. The smoothie my wife made for me toward the end probably saved the day.
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I need to be more careful with air temperature. It didn’t feel cold on the skin because I was working, but it really messed things up and by ride 6 I couldn’t even take a deep breath without triggering a coughing fit. Next time I need to keep myself cool during a tough indoor ride I’ll figure out something other than opening the windows - double up the fans, have wet towels in the fridge, lots of ice in drinks, etc.
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I only had 2 usable bibs, but it turns out that washing a bib and using it again 3 rides later isn’t bad even if it isn’t dry yet, and is actually a bit refreshing.
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I’m glad I didn’t turn it up to 80% after the first ride.
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I probably should have done Power Station earlier and left Revolver for later. The length of the efforts was making a bigger difference than the power target by that point.
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Between the cool air and the fan blowing on me all day, I actually got windburn on my face. That’s not something I had even considered might happen.
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My hands and wrists got rather sore. The lower intensity meant a lot of weight on my hands. Changing position a lot was essential.
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On a positive note, everything went smoothly from a technical perspective. I had all the videos downloaded and they worked fine. No app crashes, no workout player problems, no sensor glitches. I set an 8 minute timer for each break and stuck to it, and at no point did I worry that any issues were going to delay things and wreck the attempt.
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In the time since saying I didn’t want to above and now, I’ve started to think that maybe someday I’ll do it again, if a friend wants to do their quest, or something like that. It’d be interesting to see how it goes if I can avoid (or at least minimize) the issues with food, cold air and a sore knee, since those were really the things that made it suck the most.
Thanks all for the support! It was definitely encouraging to see that there were people following what was going on and that I wasn’t just pedaling away alone in the middle of nowhere.
Also Sir @DarrenWCKam I love the shrink cap on that bottle! As a w(h)inemaker myself I think I need to get some of those for my next batch…
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Great post-ride recap!
Nutrition seems to be the biggest thing that can really derail a KOS attempt. But then there’s always that one thing you don’t consider like your cold air issues. Heat in a closed room isn’t usually that bad for a 1, 2, 3, or even 4 hour ride, but it can really build up. Glad you we able to finish it off. And your wife was definitely a quest-saver! My wife made me 3 pb&j sandwiches during my first attempt and those were some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. 
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Awesome recap Sir Mike and once again, well done!
Actually I could never comprehend the cold air temperature and doing a hard session since it never gets that cold here where I live in SEA
Never thought of that, but wouldn’t you have a sore bum from that?
As for me, the nappy cream and that God-sent snowflake cream really did wonders when I did my Quest last year. 
As long it’s food and it’s something sweet, it was a quest saver, at least for me in the last 2 rides of the day. So glad I had that boxed multigrain soy milk in the ice bag. 
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Yeah I believe the quote I left behind from my KoS was that “even the air from my fan hurt”. 
And there it is. You did it right.
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Yeah, I made three also for mine. The first two were AMAZING. Couldn’t even choke the third one down to save my life near the last hour.
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“And for some reason I turned the intensity back up to 75% for this ride.”
Chapeau!!
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Actually I forgot to mention, I believe whatever our significant other makes for us to eat, just tastes better. 
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