Everesting, my goal completed!

Have you sent this to @Jonathan yet?

Why would he care? :wink:

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I heard a rumour that he’s into this kind of thing… but I don’t remember where.

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Well done fella, kudos to you. I’m doing mine on Sunday. After months of training and preparation, I just want to get on with it now.

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So 2 days after, I’m starting to feel human again. My everesting started at 2am Wednesday morning, up from bed and ate what I could stomach at that early hour. Had muesli with yogurt. A short drive with all my gear and started my first lap just before 4am. It was hard picking the right hill. Not to steep, not to flat, the right road surface, not a technical or scary decent, not too much traffic, there’s lots to consider. I was happy with my final decision.

I started training for this back in November, I don’t race a lot but enjoy the training process and typically pick a goal in the fall to keep me motivated throughout the long Canadian winters. This goal scared me into being extremely consistent. I did a low volume plan and added 2 easy rides each week and basically did 100% of my workouts except for one week with the flu. My longest ride going into Wednesday’s everesting was 4.5 hours, which really freaked me out, but finding time for really long rides with kids is difficult as I’m sure most people know. However despite the lack of long rides I felt my fitness was definitely there.

My goal was to hold between 60 and 70% of ftp for the climbing. I had a really hard time figuring out those numbers. My gut said I could hold 60-70% for the duration, but there’s no way to really know until you do it. Also on the podcast Jonathan has recommended several times to not exceed 55% for something that long. However holding such low power put my estimated time up way too much. So I rolled the dice, luckily, it worked out. I paced perfectly. All 44 laps were almost the exact same time except my last lap, but still only 2 minutes slower than the previous 43 laps.

Nutrition was so important, I had it all figured out months ago. 90g of carbs/ hour. I had sis go energy drink, sis gels, cliff bars cut into 3rds, cliff blocs and plain white rice cooked with a little butter and salt. Also had some water with nuun, just for the electrolytes. At lap 33 and then again at 40 I had a red bull, I don’t usually don’t like taking in energy drinks, but boy did they help.

So the most important thing for me was my support. My wife Kim was there the entire time. She is also an avid cyclist and TrainerRoad user and knows what it means to set a goal and achieve it no matter what. She made me eat when I felt like throwing up, made me drink when I didn’t feel thirsty, had dry warm clothes for me ready ( did I mention it rained? It did…for 7.5hours straight!!! ) But most important, she would not let me give up, in my moments of doubt, which there were many, she kept me strong, she would not let me give up. If I didn’t have Kim, and if Kim didn’t know what it feels like when you quit early on a ride or a workout, that horrible feeling you get hours later or the next day, I’m positive I wouldn’t have made it. Just like TrainerRoad workouts, it was the 65-70% done, that nearly broke me. The point where you’ve gone so far, further that you thought you could, you feel so tired and you’ve got so much of the ride left. Lap 27-33, they were the hardest. Not so much on my body, looking back my lap times were still the same, but mentally. I was breaking down. Kim got me through it.

So what would I do differently?
I would have done some low cadence work. Some really low cadence work. I usually spin quite quickly, between 95 and 100 rpm. I did some sweetspot workouts and would slow down to what I thought was slow, 80-85rpm. However out on that hill I was consistently doing 65-70 and my knees can really feel it. Also…Shammy cream. Unfortunately, with the constant rain and riding in wet shorts for so long I got some horrible chaffing in horrible spots. I should have been very liberally applying cream…everywhere.
So that’s it. That’s my epic day. Now I’m asking myself, what’s next!?

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Was it the hardest ride you’ve ever done would you say?

That’s tough to say, It’s not the worst I’ve ever felt on a bike. I’ve had many bonks and blow ups over the years. In fact, the ride that sticks out the most in my mind was when I first started cycling, I had a Giant Yukon mountain bike and I decided to ride a loop on the road. I got 90 min in and bonked hard. I managed to find one of those food trucks that drive between factories at lunch and breaks times and begged for a gatorade. I sat at the side of the road thinking I’d never touch my bike again if I could just get home. Needless to say, I made it home and probably rode my bike the next day.
The eversting was epic though. Really hard. Really really hard. Kind of a blur now though.

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I’m with you. I have an Everest in my bucket list, along with running a marathon. Any guidance on how long the 8% climb should be?

Mt Mitchell is in my backyard, but it’s probably a 2 hour climb. It averages at 4%, peaks at about 10%, but is in the 5-8% range for most of it. Elevation is roughly 1,500m. So, you’d have to climb it 6 times. Maybe 2 hour each leg is too much, so you could just repeat a section. But what’s ideal? 60 mins, 30 mins, … ?

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I need to re-find the link that had the info I read, not sure where it is at the moment. I don’t remember a length exactly. For a guess, around 1 hour max seems like a decent timing for a break and rest on the down.

Looking at that profile, the extra long down along the way may or may not be good. It’s a mini-break that could act to split your overall hill effort enough for food and muscle loading.

Part of me thinks of this like riding intervals and needing either one manageable short climb, or a longer one with some relief.

Make sure to review any hill in this app. It gives you a decent perspective of the effort, time and distance for each hill.
https://everesting.io/

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That calculator is great, thanks for posting. I was a little off, it’s “only” 5 repeats. Oddly, this kinda makes me more into it :man_facepalming:

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Congrats on the everest - that is a much quicker time than mine :slight_smile: - I had to ride all night too.
I forget what my planned power was, but I ended up starting at the high side of my range and stayed consistent for the whole time. I think FTP based estimates get you a good starting point, but you have to go by feel. I had really low gearing (34/36), so I was able to spin nicely the whole time, which really helps climbing at lower intensities.
There is so much planning/strategy stuff for everesting, having a thread/group for that could be fun. I liked geeking out planning mine.

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Do longer climbs generally give better times in the calculator?

Mt. Mitchell looks hard to me for a few reasons. First is hydration and Nutrition, You’ll have to carry 2 hours worth up the hill each lap or figure out a way to have some support throughout the lap. Second is the total distance, 316km is a long way, I get that half of that is descent, which brings me to number 3. I’m not a confident descender, so 40 min at 50km/h freaks me out, especially on the 3rd or 4th lap when exhaustion starts to kick in. That’s me though, if you’re comfortable with descending that may not be an issue. Also maybe you’re used to riding that sort of distance, so perhaps 319km is not an issue either.

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I don’t think so. It is a simple calculator that uses the grade, speed, weight and such to estimate a time. That includes up AND down (the descending matters plenty here in the overall picture of time). Then add in your breaks to get the whole picture.

Good points. I guessed at the descent speed, maybe 40 km/h is more realistic. I’d have to do the climb and see what the numbers come out like.

To mitigate some of your concerns, I guess I could:

  • Take a shorter segment of this climb that is also steeper to reduce the distance of the climb and the descent
  • Park the car half way up in the mid-point descent and rest in the middle of the climb to make is 2 * 1 hour instead of 1 * 2 hours and rest at the bottom.
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I wondered the same thing. You can look up all the registered completions here https://everesting.cc/ If you sort by duration, then remove all the virtual climbs, gradient makes the biggest difference. Dozens of repeats on 1-2km climbs of 10+% grades. If you can keep it up, you’re looking at 5-7 hours and about 150km.

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Now after playing with it more, it looks to be the other way around. There seems to be a huge difference between a shorter sharper 0.5mile climb and longer easier stuff say 5 miles. Hours of difference even though the longer climbs can have much faster descents as they’re on safer wide roads. 13 hours for the 0.5 mile climb and over 16 hours on the 5mile climb.

Really weird, not getting my head around it, but the numbers look legit. Will toy around again tomorrow when head is fresher. Maybe start posting some comparison screenshots for groupthink on it…

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Yeah and that sounds counterintuitive to me. I’d have thought that the stuff with the nastier gradients should be avoided, but a guy locally used a short sharp climb and now I’m starting to understand why… the numbers work.

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Well, it stands to reason that steeper may be faster, and maybe shorter too. The issue that you need to make sure you look at and hold steady is power.

Make sure to set a wattage max and use the same one for all analysis. This means adjusting speed to be slower with steeper hills.

If you didn’t adjust speed to keep wattage constant, you are getting bad data.

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I’m trying them all around tempo wattage, but wondering if it’s okay to go higher… maybe could try a 40 lap effort on a chosen hill to test it soon… shouldn’t be too heartbreaking…

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