Virtual Everesting
Everesting – climbing a section of road or trail as many times as it takes to reach the altitude of Mount Everest – 8,848 meters, or 29,029 freedom feet. The folks at everesting.cc say “Everesting is the most difficult climbing challenge in the world” although I suspect people who have actually climbed Mount Everest would disagree. It is tough, though.
I had been thinking about Everesting for awhile, and even have the section of road picked out for it – an added kudo is Everesting a “first ascent” – a section of road that hasn’t been Everested before.
Unfortunately, or maybe in retrospect fortunately, the Coronapocalypse lockdown has taken that off the plate for the time being. So the new new thing is Virtual Everesting – doing it all in the virtual cycling world of Zwift, with a computer-controlled turbo trainer.
There are really two main choices of location in Zwift to do this – the “Radio Tower Climb” or “Alpe du Zwift”, the latter being a pretty faithful copy of the famous Alpe d’Huez climb featured in so many Tours de France. I targeted for this one.
I had climbed it a few times previously in Zwift, and knew an average time for me was approximately 1.5 hours. Slow, but that’s me. I also knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain that pace for multiple ascents, so targeted approx 2 hours per lap.
I chose my weekend based on nothing more than it was mid-way between the 2nd anniversary of my father’s passing away and Father’s Day, and was a couple of days after the 67th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
Plan was to start at 5AM, and do eight and a half climbs of the Alpe du Zwift (AdZ for now on). This would equate to approximately 200km and exactly 8,848 meters of climbing.
I started on time, and set a proper pace for lap one. On the second ascent I started feeling too good – feeling my oats, I set a PR on the climb. That was definitely NOT in the plans, and I paid for it in the next couple of laps – near cramping, and a knee issue.
On top of that, on lap three I faced a schoolboy error – I had forgotten to charge my Di2 shifter battery, and was having shifting problems. Thankfully I had a spare on another bike, so swapped round.
Then on lap four I had some more shifting errors. I know by derailleur hanger is slightly bent, so the day before I had tuned the shifting to work in the lowest gears. All seemed good, but midway up lap four the rear derailleur got “stuck” on the lowest gear – not really a problem since I was going slow, but did make pacing a bit of a pain. Once at the top I sprayed some WD-40 into the derailleur, bashed it around a bit, and it seemed to start working again.
Laps five to eight were “easy” in the sense it was just grinding. One I got part-way through lap five I had broken the ride’s back mentally, so it was just a grind to the finish. As an added bonus, on lap six my coach and friend Iain texted to suggest I have a beer “for the carbs”. Fuck yeah – I’m all about that kind of ride fuelling strategy!
On lap eight I was virtually joined by a couple of friends in Zwift – Ian from VCGS and my friend John. Both paced me up the hill – riding alongside, giving some encouragement via Zwift’s chat system. Having these supporters on the ride with me really made a difference – giving me the same morale boost I would have gotten on a ride in the real world.
John and Ian stayed with me on the final half lap ascent, and in the final 100 meters (ascent) or so I started smashing it – going above any power levels I had hit all day.
After finishing, I took a quick shower, ate some pizza, and went straight to bed!
Writing this now about ten days later, I can safely say recovery from the ride was harder than I expected. I’ve done enough 24 hour races to know what recovery is normally like, but I guess I didn’t take into account the fact that Everesting is basically constant – a constant grind up, with none of the little freewheeling/walking/changing position breaks you get on a normal ride or race. I’m still wiped out from it!
As with all my 24 hour races, immediately afterwards I always say “never again”, and then after some time and letting the memory of suffering disappear, I start thinking about it again. And the same for Everesting. I’ve got my eyes on a “first ascent” of a road up in the Highlands…
