David at The Sufferfest sent me a pre-release copy of his new indoor training video, ‘A Very Dark Place’ a few days ago. The weather has been unseasonably warm and sunny recently though, so I didn’t really have much chance until yesterday to sit on the turbo trainer for an hour to try it out…

All the usual ingredients of a Sufferfest are here – brilliant cycling footage, great music and just the right amount of on-screen instruction (with some added taunting).

The workout is nicely structured without any unnecessary complexity – it follows the now-familiar ‘warm-up – hard – recover – HARD – recover – GNNNNNN – recover – AAAARGGGGGHHH – recover…etc’ pattern of other Sufferfest vids with the duration of the main set of intervals being quite long at 4 minutes each.

Other Sufferfests are available with varying types and durations of intervals, from 15 x 1 minute flat-out orgies of pain to 4 x 20 minute, big-gear, high-resistance, ‘I’m pretending to climb an Alp’ er….orgies of pain.

I think David has invested in some new editing software recently, because the overall quality feel of A Very Dark Place is quite a lot higher than in previous efforts. The footage is always nice to look at but the whole thing just seems ‘polished’. The 4^th interval also includes some of the most exhilarating cycling footage you’re ever likely to see, thrusting the sharp-end of the 2010 Paris-Roubaix into your face and loud metal down your ears, the clever bit is how that kind of assault on your senses forces you to push yourself harder, until the interval is over and the equally great, but much more mellow, footage of a rider descending urges you to recover.

For anyone who trains indoors and wants to make the most of their time on a turbo trainer without getting bored, The Sufferfest is essential.