At 4:06 am last Sunday, Donna and I clipped in and rode into the darkness, up a mile-long hill in rural East Hartland, CT. It was the first of 89 repetitions of the hill for me (embarking on a full Everest) and the first of 45 for Donna (doing a half).
To do a (bike) Everest, you start by choosing a hill of any length or grade. Then you ride up and down that hill enough times to equal the elevation of the summit of Mt. Everest (8848 meters or 29,032 feet). You can take as long as you need, but it must be a single activity – you can’t do half one day and come back the next day to finish.
We had a little bit of experience going into this one. Last year for my birthday weekend, I did a half-Everest on the same hill. Donna joined me for a bunch of my laps that day. And she observed that her birthday falls very near the Solstice, so an Everest attempt at that time would minimize riding in the dark. And the plan was hatched.
The weeks leading up to Sunday were absorbed with planning: nutrition, electronics, bike gear and backups, support, port-o-let locations, re-marking the cracks on the descent for safety, and time management. I decided to do 15 (almost) sets of six reps, while Donna opted for 11 sets of four. This meant we would spend much of the day passing each other in opposite directions, ascending and descending.
I was particularly concerned with getting it done in a semi-reasonable amount of time to minimize night riding. (I hate night riding.) I set a target power number for the climbs (see comment on hubris below), checked my average descent time from October, and decided to aim for a budget of two hours of stoppage. With those parameters, I would finish in 18 hours, at 10 pm after starting at 4:00 am. With some slippage I figured I would at least be done by about midnight.
About that target power: in October, my power on the climbs averaged 162 watts, or 75% of FTP. For this ride, I settled on a target of about 10 watts higher – I thought I was in about the same form as October, and this event was twice as long, so why 10 watts more? Hubris. The only excuse I have is that I thought the October pace was conservative, and I had some left in the tank at the end. We did some recon laps the weekend before, and the power target stuck…
…until the end of the third set, 18 laps in. I wasn’t blowing up, but it felt too hard, and I still had a long day ahead of me. I backed off 5 watts, and that was fine for a few more sets. And then the numbers started to head south without a decision to do so, and I hit the low point of my ride right around halfway. The numbers were tanking badly, I didn’t feel good, I had a hot spot under my left big toe, I had been on the road for 9-10 hours, it was hot and humid, and I wanted to quit.
I thought about it. And I thought, if I quit, then I would have to try again, which would mean doing the first half again, and I didn’t want to do that. I thought about all my friends and family supporting me. And I thought about the goal, which was to finish the damn thing. And I finally made peace with the fact that the rest of the day would be spent watching my numbers decline, and my job was just to keep pushing the pedals. This is much like getting older, so it resonated.
This event is largely about pacing and nutrition, and the nutrition details could fill another blog piece (I promise they won’t), but suffice to say we had a carload of a wide variety of things to eat and drink. One strategy that I endorse is that (aside from pre-ride coffee) I don’t take anything caffeinated for as long as possible, say the first two-thirds. Before my ninth set I started introducing a little caffeine, followed by the ultimate fuel starting on the tenth set, cans of straight Coca-Cola.
A lap from the end of the ninth set, I saw more cars at our base camp at the bottom of the hill, and when I finished the ninth, there was my son Mitch and his partner Emily and his mother Carole, and some cycling friends including Jim, who said he would come back later to ride in the dark with me. (See below.) And just as I stopped and greeted them, Adam pulled up in his pickup and offered to ride a few laps with me.
The second wind lasted most of two sets: I’ll give the caffeine some credit, but mostly it was the people. During this time, Donna finished her half-Everest. Twice.
Huh? I still don’t understand what happened, but every ride we did on this hill from last October had agreed 100% between Garmin unit numbers, Strava numbers, the Everesting site check, etc., but on this day we were coming up short on our head units from the elevation we should have achieved on the climbs. So after Donna finished her (presumably) last lap, she checked her elevation – and learned she had to do one more! Or maybe not – what was the right data? She decided to do the “insurance” (penalty?) lap and completed her half.
I had just finished lap 72 (having just adjusted my target lap count from 87 to 89), it was starting to get dark and Donna and Mitch and I wondered about Jim’s plan to return. He hadn’t asked about timing, so that he could do, for instance, the last set. Just then, he pulled up. He probably didn’t know quite what he was getting into, but he wound up doing my last three sets (17 laps) with me in the dark.
By then, I was pretty well trashed. It was a deeper, different sort of trashed than I’ve felt in any other endurance event. The intensity was low – my heartrate was quite sedate – but the extreme duration and the demands of muscling the pedals uphill for hours just ground me to bits. Jim was calm and steady and happy to ride at whatever pace I could manage, kept up a cheerful chatter (my side of the conversation was lame), and he stuck it through to the end. I am forever grateful.
I managed enough upper-body strength for a fist-pump across the line at the top of the last climb, and we managed one last safe descent. I was able to unclip without falling over, but I couldn’t lift my leg to get off the bike. Mitch leaned the bike over and Donna pulled me off, just after midnight.
The whole effort had taken just over 20 hours. I’d climbed 29,094 vertical feet and ridden 185 miles in the process. I later saw that of the ~8,000 recorded bike Everests, I was the 10th oldest to do it. (How the metrics change with age!)
I’m happy and proud to have done this once, with lots of great memories of my partner and family and friends… and at this point I have no intention of ever doing it again. But if anyone else is tackling an Everest, I’ll be happy to crew the base camp, ride some laps, or work the night shift like Jim.
