And for a Way Too Early sneak peak at next year’s third anniversary quest…
I will be starting off with Rue the Day. And i will definitely be thinking of so many things to rue. Many of which I’m already ruing.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Still 6 weeks to go to this year’s effort.
Hehe. Nothing like a good ruing.
You don’t have to say that. We are ALL ‘unwell’. Just is, some of us are more than others.
I’m not phased. There have been 24 hour Knighthood rides. Sir Conehead has done some spectacular work in this arena.
Yes, very true. I haven’t even considered attempting a double knighthood, yet. I don’t know if I’ll survive beyond 12 or 13. But you never know until you do or do not.
Let’s just say, it’s all in the head. 
Perhaps Sir Evan @emacdoug did, just that the doctor found nothing wrong with him. You know, sometimes, when we see a doctor for some illness, it just goes away upon entering the clinic 
@emacdoug You certainly put in the time and your legs would get there. All of that saddle time on a trainer probably becomes the real challenge. We are all rooting for you!
Thank you, it’s’ much appreciated! 
I’m just giving you a hard time. Anyone who does two or more Knighthoods needs SERIOUS help. The good part is that we can do them whereas 99% of the world will never have the opportunity to.
I’ve called myself insane for a long time, so feel free to recommend help as much as you like. It’s a requirement to even attempt a KOS, so it comes with the territory. 
And as I get older it seems to be getting worse. Yet, I don’t know that most people who know me outside of Wahoo/SUF ever see this side of me. I’m so much more rational IRL. lol. You can probably see some of that in my overly-long and overly-analytical posts. heh. This is one of those conditions where therapy only works if you want it to work. I’m not at that point. When my wife questions my sanity she only makes it worse. 
And every time I see someone new attempting their first KOS quest it motivates me with new ideas to try on my next one. Plus, every time I see someone doing G.O.A.T… Well, let’s just say there’s a reason I’m doing it as number 11, not 10 or 12.
Anyway, turning my second attempt up to 11 was a fun way to do a second quest that I felt was worthy after questioning my own first attempt while also paying some homage to the errors of my attempt. No quest ever goes perfectly, so why not have fun with it. Plus, almost all my original videos were 60 minutes or less and I wanted to go long and do all the longest videos because what better way is there to do a worthy knighthood? (yes there may be other ways, but I digress).
I’m not sure doing 12 is the best idea for this my third quest, but I have almost exactly 12 videos left that I didn’t do during my first 2. That was slightly ruined when Rue the Day came out. So that means I HAVE to do a fourth, right? lol. But, yeah, I feel like adding one more every year is kind of digging myself a hole I may not want to keep going down in the future. Do I really want to do 13 or 14? At what point do I need to pull the plug on that path? I don’t have an answer at this point. But as long as my suffering is entertaining for you and still enjoyable suffering for me I’ll keep it up. I’ll just have to burn that bridge when I come to it. lol. Probably in a spectacular GvA approved manner.
How do you mean…?
Just 30 days now until my anniversary quest commences. It’s going to be The Best Thing In the World.
…for us
May the suffering be with you dear Sir
2 weeks and 3 days left until the big day. Planning to ride a half-quest this Saturday.
Then I’ve created routes for a few local climbs that I’ve created Magic Roads for and want to test out for a future everesting on RGT.
I’ve got loads of suffering in store for the end of this year. Need to bottle up that SUF holy water and shred some chamois for the holiday feasts.
Be sure to keep that bottle warm in lava snow
What’s a KOS quest without fresh numbers!
Even tho I’ve done HM a few times this year, I was due for a real Full Frontal. (After the test I checked and discovered I haven’t done FF in over 16 months! I better report to flogging station #7). I have lots of reasons for this… but I’ll just leave it at that and let GvA sort it out.
So, this morning I dutifully performed my FF 4DP. And my suffering was glorious.
It was probably one of only a couple really complete FF attempts where I hit every section hard and felt like I didn’t mess any of them up and really couldn’t have gone harder in any of them to make any reasonable difference in the numbers.
I’ve been doing a lot more long Z2 rides and 1 or 2 HIT sessions every week, and riding between 9 and 12 hours almost every week (averaging around 11 hours). So somewhere close to 80/20 (probably more like 85/15). And it seems to have done wonders for my FTP and my MAP (not so much my AC or NM).
I tried my best to stare at the video, not close my eyes, ignore the power numbers on the screen (as much as possible), and just ride to feel. Mostly I just wanted to be able to see a red or neutral background to my power numbers more often than blue without trying to look at the actual numbers, but try not to care and just ride so that I felt I did my best.
The 2 sprints felt a little off, but I gave them all I could. Mostly they felt like I was out of practice and I probably could’ve hit higher numbers if I practiced my technique a bit more. Between losing the use of my big ring for most of last year and chronic back issues that had me mostly off the bike the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I haven’t done a lot of sprinting. I did Violator during last year’s KOS attempt but it was all in the little ring while seated. Today I still hit over 1,200w peak power, and my 5-sec power was down, but not enough to worry about.
I felt like I nailed the 5-minute section. I got all I could out of it and I couldn’t have gone any harder or lasted much longer. My cadence was a bit lower (closer to 90rpms or slightly below) than when I’ve done my best numbers before, but at the same time I felt like my power was more consistent with fewer fluctuations. And while I couldn’t put out any more power at the end I wasn’t fading either. I felt strong and well-paced to ride a perfect even effort.
The 20-minute section was brutal, as usual. I didn’t try to hit a specific number. I took the first minute or two to ease into the effort and then tried to hold it for the next 17-18 minutes. Like the 5-minute effort, my cadence again felt a bit lower than usual. I prefer it to be between 82-85rpms, and in my past tests I’ve sometimes had to constantly jump back and forth between gears and end up doing 85 for a couple minutes, then 75rpms, and then jump back and forth to switch between muscle usage. This time I stuck almost the entire time around 78-80rpms. If I switched up a gear I needed to be at 90+ rpms which was too quick for me to keep enough pressure on the pedals for 20 minutes and so I focused on staying right at 78-80rpms the entire time. When I was feeling better I was closer to 81-82rpms and when I was tiring I would slow to 77-78rpms. And again, I was trying to just burn a hole in the video and watch Sagan power to victory while only vaguely keeping aware of whether the power background was red or neutral or blue and keeping an even cadence and smooth out my pedal stroke.
In the end, for the 1-minute section, I was completely gassed. I wasn’t able to sprint to start the effort. It did start as a standing effort, but instead of a sharp start I kind of ramped up the power and tried to sustain it and not blow up. It was my typical stand, sit, stand, sit, stand, collapse & whimper and curse GvA. The last 10 seconds I tried to sprint again, but my legs were toasted and I just tried to keep my power over 300w. lol.
So how did I do?
So, I’m over the moon with my new numbers. And with a bit of work I can have my NM and AC moving back to where they were while improving the rest of my numbers.
And of course that means extra suffering in 2 weeks for my 2nd KOS Anniversary Quest! Glorious