Many of us are familiar with the Tour de France and other multi-stage races that happen in cycling.  Over the past few weeks Sarah and I embarked on our first nine day tour – the Tour of Sufferlandria 2015.  There’s a program we use when on the bike trainer called TrainerRoad (hands down the best $10 a month you can spend if you are a cyclist) and one of its partners is a company called The Sufferfest.  Sufferfest is known for putting out videos and workouts that make you really (yep, you guessed it) suffer.  Their workouts have some great names like Blender, The Long Scream, Nine Hammers, and my personal favorite ISLAGIATT (It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time).

For the past several years they have had an annual Tour of Sufferlandria, nine days (stages) of back to back killer rides.  No rest days.  No easy workouts.  Stage 1 was actually two workouts in a row and Stage 8 was three.  Each stage was anywhere from one to two and a half hours of fun filled suffering.  I think this may be the first time I’ve gone that many days pushing my limits with no reprieve.  Some days felt better than others, and just when I thought my body was starting to acclimate my next ride would feel like I had lead legs.  I really enjoyed the videos that accompanied the workouts; they were a great mix of race footage and encouragement with occasional clips of comedy and outright absurdity.  Sarah, on the other hand, soaked up a few seasons of Gilmore Girls.  To each his / her own.

One thing I love about events like this is that they are typically come with a charity partner helping raise awareness for those in need.  The charity for the tour was the Davis Phinney Foundation.  I’ll admit that it is not one I was familiar with two weeks ago, but I’m glad to have learned about it.  Many foundations are raising funds to find a cure for some illness.  The Davis Phinney Foundation exists not to help find a cure but to provide assistance for those currently dealing with Parkinsons.  The tour had a goal of $60k and wound up almost doubling that, raising $104k in just nine days.  I’m glad we got to play a small part in raising funds for another great cause.

Now, for the results [drumroll]….

The tour started with a peloton of 2827 riders.  Of that group 1137 riders were dropped while 1690 actually finished.

I’m glad to report that Sarah and I were both among the finishers.  In training, there’s a season for building your base and a season for building your endurance.  This is definitely the time for base building, and there’s no question that events such as this are an excellent way to do exactly that.