I am a Knight of Sufferlandria. Oh yes, I am!

Saturday 22^nd March 2014

Cycling (10:27:10 / 175.03 Miles / 16.70 MPH / HRZ 2 / Cadence 85)

Sufferfest Videos X 10 - Sufferfest-ival.

I never help out any aspirations of becoming a Knight of the Realm but Saturday got me as close to it as I am likely to get in the real world.

As of about 8.15PM on Saturday night, I am a Knight of Sufferlandria.

For those of you who think I have completely lost the plot, I probably have but to explain a little bite more; I along with six of my club mates decided to undertake the Sufferlandrian Knights Challenge, which is to complete 10 Sufferfest Cycling training videos back to back with no more than a 10 minute break between videos.

These range from 50 minutes through to 1Hr50mins in length and are very intense sessions.

So, at 7.15AM in the Assembly hall at Pond Park Primary School in Lisburn, the prospective Knights mounted our steeds and headed for the foothills of Mount Suffer!

It was an amazing day and we had huge support throughout from friends, parents, relatives, club mates and well wishers from our chosen charity which was Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

I was mounted between Ben and Mark which made for an entertaining 12 hours.  Conversation ranged from the deep and philosophical on the political situation in the Ukraine and Crimea to how Ben was going to remove his saddle which appeared to literally have rectally lodged itself within his lower cavity.  Mind you, he actually wasn’t complaining about the insertion and it was hard to tell if he was wearing a smile or a grimace.

Mark on the other hand tried to poison himself with a severe Lindor Chocolate overdose at one point.  This may have been a suicidal cry for help on his behalf to end the suffering, or it might just be that he was a greedy Git and inhaled the box of them just to avoid sharing.

“QUIT!” That was the instruction hurled between Ben and Mark.  “Be the first to quit.  Go on you know you want to!” Neither wanted to back down even though at times the prospect of getting off and walking away was appealing.

Poor Michael and Stevie were stuck on the other side of the line from us and the speaker blaring the mix of Dance / Trance/ garage/ Indie Funk/ Disco / Electric mambo / Country Hot diggidy / death metal music that accompanies each video made it hard to for them to make out all of the profanities that cascaded from Ben’s mouth.  Although to be fair to Ben he applied the pre watershed rule (most of the time) when a child or lady was near by – but the rest of the time . . . . .!

Michael developed a really loud grinding, clunking noise from his knee, ( he said it was his bike but we think it was his knee giving in) and decided to change his bike for something a bit quieter, much to the relief of everyone else.

Stevie went off hard and paid for it a bit towards the end when he had to adopt a one legged pedalling technique for a few minutes as his knee regenerated and like a starfish growing a new leg.  He was almost as good as new and knocked off the last couple of videos as if he didn’t have an artificial knee and hip!  I think he was happy just not to get sunburned today as his usual approach to cycling is to suffer third degree sunburn which lasts a full year.

Arran plied his trade quietly in the middle of the bunch and seemed to just absorb all of the madness going on around him and keep up  a relentlessly steady effort. That was until his wife and 3 month old Son Jacob arrived and the tough shell of Sufferlandrian armour was shed and the inner cuddly Panda was released.  Once they had gone he then was free to unleash something completely un-Panda-like on us.  Unfortunately it come from the bowels of Hell, well actually, the bowels of Arran and this just added to the “atmosphere!”

Poor Ciaran.  This hapless Sod decided to come down for an hour or two and see how many of the videos he could cope with in support of our challenge.  Ciaran has been working hard on the Turbo but had not gone past 1 hour in duration up until this point.

After the fifth video he declared that it was going to prove impossible for him to quit and he was more than likely just going to have to see it all out.  Shortly afterwards his wife and daughter arrived, looking concerned as apparently he had just popped out to get a pint of Vaseline and some Veet hair removal cream! (Don’t ask – but I think he was taking the whole cyclist thing too seriously)

Satisfied that Ciaran hadn’t run off with another Man, the Mrs was happy to leave him to his own devices, which is a dangerous thing to do beside Ben!

The day rolled on and we had great company from many other people popping in and doing an hour or two on the Turbos with us, we had Brendan, Mark, Stuart, Neil do an hour or two and a special mention for Ian ‘Big Ring’ Pollard who came straight from work and hopped on for four full videos and clocked up an impressive 55 miles in the process.  I also had the pleasure of my friends Richard, Paul and Stuart coming down and plugging away for an hour or two as well.

Paul made a couple of insightful observations.  The first of which was that the room was incredibly smelly,(only to be expected given the spray of sweat emanating from each of us) and secondly, as he was almost doused in the aforementioned spray of sweat he sounded impressed as he realised we were actually doing the sessions as full bore and not just cruising through them.

I have to mention the support we were given throughout the day.  The main reason for doing this apart from a desire to shortcut a vasectomy was to raise money for CF Trust, which is a charity I like to support when I can.  We had immense support on the day from the charity and especially Geoffrey. Joanne and Gillian.  All taking a go on the bikes and all realising how uncomfortable a saddle can be!

A massive thank you to my much better half Keara for her support before the big day and especially on the day.  She was there literally from the moment we arrived until the moment we left.  Helping us set up, keeping us motivated, making copious amounts of coffee, (mostly consumed by Ben and Mark) looking after visitors and even going to get the Pizzas that greeted our finish.  Her efforts were as monumental on the day as ours and she may even get honorary Dame-hood status within the Club!

The actual suffering was glorious at times and humour was maintained throughout, except for a notable dark period during Video 6 when humour appeared to get up and leave for a shower, only to return about 30 minutes later refreshed and ready to go again.

Spirits were good throughout the day and by the time we got Video 8 everyone’s legs were beginning to hurt and bums were probably taking on a Baboon-esque appearance under the lycra.  Eight and nine were tough and it was a case of just grind through them, which we did to great relief.

Everyone wanted to hit it hard for the last video which thankfully was one of the shorter ones but no less intense.  It’s remarkable when the finish line is in sight how the human spirit digs deep in to its wallet and pulls out an old wrinkled £5 note of enthusiasm and bloody minded determination.  We all worked really hard on that last one and even managed to knock out some genuinely good efforts and sprints.

The end was massively welcome and was greeted with Dominos Pizza and Carlsberg Beer.

The tired limbs hauled themselves off the bikes and tenderly edged the abused bottoms on to a seat to sit, relax and savour the fact that we had achieved something that less than 200 people in the world have done.  In the process we have raised over £2000 for charity, which WILL make a difference to people with CF and hopefully contribute to finding a cure.

During the day the actual riding time was 10 ½ hours and I covered 175.03 miles and burned 4600 calories in the process.  I went through 3 pairs of shorts, 4 t shirts and three towels.  I probably consumed about 4000 calories and dear knows how many litres of fluid.  It was worth every minute of it!

 

I felt drained but delighted to have achieved such a feat and I know that we Knights of Sufferlandria are bonded forever in the sweat and tears hard earned on wheels of Hell!