I did There Is No Try tonight, 1st time. Garmin’s been telling me to take a rest day for the last several days, but… And I did 64 miles and almost 5500’ yesterday on the roadbike, including one very hard effort on a 7.4%, almost 2 miles climb.
But I may not get a ride in tomorrow so I was thinking Ventoux this evening but it was getting so late before I started that I figured I better take the shorter of the 2 remaining July Challenge rides and be happy…
Hmm… Happiness is a relative thing…
So NOW I know There Is No Try is a rather innocent looking little thing that lays in wait for the unsuspecting… And when Ventoux is the OTHER menacing alternative, it’s even easier to think little of those intervals that are mostly down near threshold… Yahhh, they won’t be too bad…
That middle, below threshold interval by itself looks so… TAME.
I FELT IT! It may have been the worst just because of its length.
After getting past that one, I was able to use the memory of how long that one SEEMED to convince my mind that the following intervals were all shorter, and each less than the previous, and that was enough to hang tough to the end.
Mind games…
@Glen.Coutts Kind of like when you do an over / under block with Sir Mike and then for the rest block he has you do a high cadence spin. Those cadence changes never show up in the graph so things can be deceiving.
First of all, welcome back on posting! I also just finished the challenge this morning. I would have opposite request: make August’s challenge in the same level if not harder
I like the idea of having one hard long session that are usually avoided by the people, with 2 1h ~0.8-0.95 sessions. The fourth one can be an inspiration/on location videos. That’s my ideal setup for a challenge.
With this way, people can be using the long session as their Mt. Sufferlandria, giving us mere mortals something nice to achieve every month.
We must be careful what we ask for or we might just get it!
Sign below for “Kitchen sink” in a future month!!!
I’m need a separate training plan just for that.
While we are debating it, what other supersize stages from past T.O.S. could be used as a future challenge?
Wow! That’s quite a trip down agony lane after seeing that! I still remember that stage 8 from 2017 T.O.S……Barking mad that was!
I had to replace the stem on my bike as I’d chewed almost all the way through it after all those intervals……
Now, if next month’s challenge requires reliving that one for a chance of free swag, including another stem of course, then I’m in!
Just checked and mine now has a # at the front of the badge description for this month so it has gone to the top of the list. Maybe check toward the top of your awards.
Sorry that was me! I added the # so it appears as the first badge for the month and then I will update each month so the new badge is the first to appear under events and more obvious.
Happy to change back if we prefer it, just thought it made current events appear more obvious
Reading through all the comments, it looks like I’m not alone in thinking the Ventoux was … SPICY. Spicy is actually being generous. I was bloody miserable (extended FTP efforts are not my jam), and literally the only thing that kept me going was the ****ing badge. There was a point when I was trying to do the maths on how much I needed to do for it to be considered complete by the app. I remember reading once it was 75% of the ride. In the end I didn’t want to risk it, so I finished the whole ride, but had to turn it down to 95% and then 90%, and take extra breaks off the bike to convince myself to finish. Please don’t make me do that again! At some points I actually thought ‘this is enough to make me not like riding a bike!’
That said, I’m going to cleanse my palette with an outdoor ride tomorrow, hit some roads and then a few laps of Richmond Park in London, and hopefully that will remind me that it’s not ALL Ventoux out there …
@Rupert.H To me it looks like the badges are already sorted by date - but in ascending order. Maybe just switch to descending order and you won’t have to change anything. Also I don’t think they are sorting on the date in the title but the date that the challenge was made based on a review of other badges I have received over the years.
At some points I actually thought ‘this is enough to make me not like riding a bike!’