My life is dead busy. All the time. That’s not a bad thing, my life is full of great stuff and great people. I do however often find myself with more things to do than I could possibly have time for, but then there are a lot of things that are just lower priority and simply don’t happen until it’s absolutely necessary (DIY, cutting the grass, washing the car, etc).

A very large chunk of my ‘free’ time is spent racing and training (that’s why I’m busy all the time I guess, I’m always buggering off for a ride). The very nature of the races that I ‘specialise’ in involve training sessions that are quite long. For example a 4-hour ride is relatively short when considered in the context of 24 hour solo racing.

But a lot can be achieved in a short period of time, such as an hour. And often, all I have is an hour.

You’ve just got to make sure that what you do with that hour delivers, as much as possible, the training benefits that a much longer ride would do. In other words, an Hour Of Pain is infinitely better than nothing at all when you’re short on time. Oh, and apparently short periods of ‘very hard’ can make you faster than if you just did ‘long periods of moderately hard’.

So from time to time, when life in general is particularly busy, or tiring, or if I get completely sick of bad weather, I turbo train. Once upon a time, turbo training would be something to avoid at all costs – the sheer boredom and feeling that time is ticking by at half-speed would amplify the pain and discomfort and despite intentions to do x number of intervals, quite often a session would be abandoned before the end.

That was until I discovered The Sufferfest. A small collection videos containing structured training routines that make indoor training harder (in a good way) but at the same time more enjoyable (I’m not joking). Using footage of road racing, cyclocross and sometimes even downhill racing set to a brilliant soundtrack, the Sufferfests have changed my whole approach to indoor training.

No longer is it a means to an end, a way of training when time or conditions leave me with no alternative…now I’m actually including turbo training in my training plans. It’s a regular thing. I’m even seeing a tangible difference in my overall condition.

Up to now, four videos are available all concentrating primarily on a particular aspect of cycle training – climbing, flat-out speed, sustained efforts at threshold – get them all and you’ve all it covered.

I’m getting nothing for this review. I might get a thanks from the guy who produces them, but apart from that, nowt. I’m not expecting anything either. Sometimes, you use something that’s so good that you’ve got to share it.