Me and indoor training have history – in the winter of 2008/09 I used the rollers 3 or 4 times a week and in the process managed to turn around my fitness, improve my core strength and eliminate a waggly knee.  Last winter I had moved house and my training suffered due to constant, persistent complaints about the noise from my downstairs neighbours.  As we head into the autumn months and the accompanying dip in temperature my thoughts are once again turning to indoor training. 

I’ve moved house again now and indoor training is no longer a problem (or rather, my new neighbours are much more accommodating).  Besides which a summer of low mileage whilst I’ve been sorting my back has done wonders on decreasing my fitness and expanding my waistline.  With my club championships fast approaching, that needs rectifying. Quickly.

Cue The Sufferfest’s latest release – ‘Angels’.

I snapped up all three of The Sufferfest’s previous efforts as soon as they became available.  It’s a while since I’ve done any of them now so I forget which is which, but it remains to be said that Downward Spiral, Fight Club and Revolver have shown a steady progression – both from the previous video Podcast format and from video to video in this newer format  – as features have been added or updated which help you whilst you’re head-down-and-hurting.  ‘Angels’, the most recent release builds on the strengths of those, eliminates the weaker features and chucks in a ‘sting in the tail’ for good measure.

Based around three climbs, after a decent warm-up you go into ten minutes of ‘over/under’ where you never quite work flat out, but you never get any kind of rest either – that comes when the ten minutes is up, then four minutes later you’re straight into the first climb.  I’m not going to give away details, but it hurts.  Prepare to ‘attack’ with regular frequency over all three climbs, and look forward to those rests because you’ll need them.

In a nutshell, Angels is great… in a hurty kind of way.  I don’t want to say too much because you’ll see for yourself, and you really should do exactly that.  I think it’s an incredibly well thought out and structured training session though, and the best thing is that you lose track of that in the instructions, video clips and music that keep you occupied.  You’re training exactly the way you should be without having to time your efforts or program a workout into your Garmin – and if you’ve tried to do that before you’ll know it’s a nightmare!

It remains to be said that the previous three are all also well worth a purchase.  Angels is the most slick of them, but the structured training and instructions are still there on the others.  Mix these four videos into your training plan along with some decent weekend rides and you’ll struggle to go wrong I reckon.

“I will beat my ass today to kick yours tomorrow” – I agree with half of that statement for sure, but it’ll take a few more visits to the ‘pain cave’ before I can apply the other half…