For those of you out there who think that the Kitchen Sink isn’t that hard, have you tried it after a fresh set of targets from your FF?
I completed that “symphony of suffering” yesterday, 6 days after my last FF in erg mode at 100%. I should’ve switched to level for Violator, but was too busy picking my intestines up off the floor after getting hit by a shovel and two hammers.
Anyway, I consumed 2 bottles with sugar water, 2 bottles with water, 5 gels (2 with caffeine), and a pack of bloks. Pealed off 2 sweaty jerseys and replaced with dry ones during those brief respites from the flogging.
Thank you, Rina. Yeah it’s crazy to think they are out there. But, before posting, I just searched the forum for Kitchen Sink, and there’s some traffic suggesting that it’s not too bad. I thought I was gonna die!
If you’re an endurance person it’s not that bad. My regular outdoor is 6-8 hours, so 3 in a trainer where the high intensity intervals are dialled down is not insane. To be clear - you’re working hard, but it’s def not crazy.
@pb07 Guess I didn’t realize they were “dialed down” - but thank you for the perspective. Probably would’ve felt closer to sane if I had done it before my last FF - where I had a pleasant, but surprising, 20W jump in my 1min and 10W jump in my 20min efforts. Could have spent more time getting used to the new targets - but that would’ve placed me “dangerously close to the border of Couchlandria.” And we do not want to do that! We’d much rather be breathing out our butthole.
But what is a “long ride” for you? And how often do you ride for 3+ hours? Obv it would be easier with lower targets, but as you increase training duration you don’t tend to increase ftp, but rather your tte at sub threshold extends. That figures heavily in this workout, because if physiologically you can hold 75% ftp for 3 hours… That will feel very different to 75% for 5 hours etc etc. If you’re riding at 75% it should feel pretty easy - “ride all day”, and physiologically you can recover from hard efforts at that level. Buuuuut… If you’re not used to holding that level for XX hours then you’re actually burning matches faster.
Another way of thinking about this is - how does it compare to a steady state 3 hour sub threshold ride? It’s waaaaaay harder
So yes it does totally hit you harder than just pedalling at a consistent 75-80% - but - having a lot of endurance training makes it feel easier than it would otherwise
@pb07 Excellent points! 100% agree that % of FTP at 3 hours (or 4 or 5 or…) will increase with greater endurance. My profile is an Attacker so, KS should have “felt” easier, and it wasn’t until Violator that I was suffering mightily. That I didn’t switch to level for that ensured that I was doing max squats every 10-15s instead of being able to “wind-up” so there’s an equipment oriented component too. After those “squats” my legs were hammered. That made everything else very tough.
Admittedly my long rides have tapered off a bit in the winter (not normal for me) but I recently moved, work has ramped up, and I have had to dial back the volume for life reasons. That said, I’ve finished mid-pack in two 5 day gravel stage races (350 miles/35,000ft) and will do back to back 3.5-5 hour rides during a training block. Not the best, but my endurance is, at a minimum, very passable.
Interesting. Kitchen Sink is also my last SUF video to do, and one I have looked at with trepidation for many months, wondering when I’d have 3 hours free and want to spend it doing a ride inside. After long consistent rains here in Northern California, I was gearing up to do it today (we’re off of work in US for MLK Day) but woke up with a sore throat so decided today was not the day to put my body through that punishment.
I also read some recent posts and felt less nervous about it given folks had mentioned it was scaled down -however the visual graphs of the ride seem to suggest otherwise. However, running the numbers (IF, TSS, etc) to arrive at an estimated Normalized Power (NP) for the 3 hours gives me 292 watts which is about 83% of my FTP (351). Which to me seems more daunting as I think hard sessions are generally anything close to 300 and above for me with my highest NP value ever being 344 on nine hammers which is slightly less than an hour long.
Obviously, you can get there multiple ways with high intense sprints or steady state tempo but to have that NP level for a 3 hour ride is no joke! Will adjust expectations and prepare for suffering when I negotiate with my wife to give me another 3 hour block.
Welcome to the forum! You’ll find all kinds of great stuff here (and some complaining too - but that’s to be expected in a public forum).
Sounds like you’ve been on SUF a while and know the drill. For KS, I would just expect to consume a lot more fuel when you tackle that beast. @pb07 is correct, you’ll probably be burning a lot of matches with so many max efforts.
