Ever since we expanded our Slowtwitch Ride portfolio to four events, they've all had one thing in common: they tend to be pretty hard rides. Whether it's the banded, structured workouts of Ride of the Valkyries or Tuesday Structured Training, or the mass group rides of Rise and Grind and Hilly Vanilli, they are hour-long efforts that are designed to put you through the proverbial wringer. After all, it's the hard efforts that people talk about after the fact.

But equally important are the less sexy sessions. The so-called "meat and potatoes" sessions that prep you for those difficult ones. Those that warm you up for the bigger blocks ahead.

Well, now you can do a session like that with us and Team Every Man Jack's Sean Hale each week on Friday, 6 AM Pacific time. Our Casual Friday ride is designed to prep you for a weekend of long training or racing. It's a mellower ride with some "opening" efforts to get you ready for whatever you've got planned on Saturday or Sunday.

As for the rest of our rides this week:

Ride of the Valkyries
Our women's only ride keeps seeing great activity. This week, we're going to one of the fastest courses in all of Watopia: Tick Tock. As a structured training workout, as always, just keep the pedals moving and you'll be sticking with the pack. This week's workout is the race preparatory Attack Attack Attack! You can probably guess what the ride is meant to simulate.

Tuesday Structured Training
We've reverted our name to it's original setting, but make no mistake, there's still plenty of firepower involved. This ride will also be taking to Tick Tock this week. Our workout of the week is inspired by a track from Pearl Jam's Vitalogy: Spin Spin. Get the fans and music on high.

Rise and Grind
Thursday morning's whip-cracking event is going to be a party this week. Well, it'll be an after party on the Volcano. We'll keep groups together for as long as we can before unleashing the fury. Our ride lead and sweep combinations this week are as follows: Matt and Alex for Bs, Mark and Ryan for Cs, and Shaun for the Ds. We had nearly 300 of you join us last week, and we'll be pushing to break that number this week.

Hilly Vanilli
We get back to business as usual this week: 55 to 65 minutes of hard riding, looking to either keep away or chase down the group up the road. We won't be racing up the Alp this week, either. Instead, you can find yourself on the Volcano circuit. The advantage of this course? Get dropped, stay pedaling until you get caught by the group behind, and re-join! It's a good way of testing your limits, so maybe it's a week to try one group up the road.

Slowtwitch Indoors Runs

We're still trotting away on May Field! Get your Runn sensors or footpods ready, and join us for any of our three remaining ST Indoors runs of the week: tonight at 7 PM Eastern, Wednesday at 7 AM Eastern, or Wednesday at 7 PM Eastern.

We'll see you in Watopia. Have fun!