By Jared Eborn
If you’re like many Utah cyclists who want to maintain their fitness through the long, cold winter months you’ve set yourself up with a trainer, a fan and a television in the corner of your basement.
You yearn for the days of long rides up mountain passes and throwing down intervals on empty stretches of road. You miss the kinds of workouts that leave you shattered and gasping for breath.
The folks at The Sufferfest feel your pain. More accurately, they sense your weakness and want to put you in a dark place – a Very Dark Place.
The seventh installment from The Sufferfest is just that – A Very Dark Place. The video features licensed footage from UCI races from around the world and gives you the chance to match the moves of Phillipe Gilbert, Fabian Cancellara, Bradley Wiggins and Thor Hushovd as they let loose in Paris-Nice, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris-Roubaix.
With a stellar soundtrack and remarkable visuals you’ll almost forget you’re about to suffer as if you were in the middle of a breakaway trying to gain seconds on a chase group up Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Forget, that is, until the warm up is over.
A Very Dark Place packs several hard efforts into a 54-minute workout destined to create puddles of sweat in basements around the world.
After warming up for five minutes, The Sufferfest tosses in a pair of 30-second sprints to wake the legs up. A short recovery period follows and then the agony begins.
Five four-minute intervals await as you suffer through Paris-Nice, Fleche-Wallone, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Roubaix and Criterium du Dauphine in succession. Mercifully you wrap things up with a cool down period set to classic cycling footage from the past.
As with any indoor cycling workout, you are free to adjust the effort and intensity to your specific comfort level. But The Sufferfest’s on-screen encouragement – some might call it taunting – won’t allow you to dial it down too far. By mixing in words of support and down right mean teasing, A Very Dark Place will have the committed cyclist cursing under what’s left of his breath by the time the workout is complete.
“A Very Dark Place was created to work you very, very hard. You need to be both physically and mentally ready (or insane) for this one,” writes Sufferfest creator David McQuillin. “It was designed to help you improve your top speed over short distances – covering, or making attacks, getting over those steep short hills and powering down the other side or taking a big pull at the front of the breakaway.”
Pain and fitness are not the only things to be gained by spending your time in A Very Dark Place.
“Of course, we’re here not just to make you suffer, but to entertain you – so we designed each 4:00 interval with a unique, eh, personality: from steady intensity to aggressive climbing to relentless attacks on the cobbles or on the bergs. You will not get bored – guaranteed.”
Priced at $11.99, A Very Dark Place is delivered via email and downloaded to your computer – making the wait for the product almost non-existent. A 7-pack bundle of all Sufferfest workouts is available for $69.99 and will keep even the most devoted indoor cyclist entertained and dripping sweat through the winter.
Visit TheSufferfest.com for more information or to order your copy.
