Here's the current state of the world (at least according to me):
- Coronavirus is on the uptick everywhere in the Midwest
- Social distancing is the norm
- The likelihood of brevets happening in May is small
- Without brevets to target, my riding has lacked focus and I'm gaining weight like crazy
So what to do?
You might have heard of The Everest Challenge. The premise is simple: you climb the height of Mt. Everest in a single ride - that's 29,029 feet of climbing. You can take as long as you want but it's got to be a single effort. The complete rules are here.Well, there's no way I can do that now, but it is something I can aspire to and what's life without a few aspirational goals?
So here's my plan: on Saturday, May 2nd at somewhere around 09:00, I'll start. My goal for this first go would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10K-15k spread over the course of the day.
Some stats
Based on the Everesting calculator (see below) and my Strava data for 25 trips up this climb, here's what the TOTAL Everesting effort would look like:- 23:40 hours
- 6 MPH average climbing speed. This is the average of all of my previous trips up the hill. My PR is a little over 9 MPH
- 32 MPH descending speed
- 22 rest stops, 8 minutes stopped each time
- 87 laps
- 208 total miles (!!)
- 10K feet of climbing
- ~8 hours total
- 4 hours climbing
- about an hour stopped
- total distance ~69 miles
The Hill
I've given a bit of thought to the "ideal" hill for Everesting. It seems like the following attributes are important:- Have enough elevation gain that you're not doing too many repetitions
- Not be too steep. Although it's tempting to throw in that 21% climb, you have to remember you're going to be doing it a BUNCH of times. The ideal gradient seems to me to be in the 6-10% range
- Little to no traffic
- A place to park that's close to the climb. You don't want to have to ride a long way just to take a break or get another water bottle
- Not a must, but it'd be nice if there's a bit of an uphill at the end of the descent, right at the start/finish to you don't have to use the brakes a lot to start the next lap
Here's the hill in question
Something that's fun to fool around with is the "Everesting calculator". You can plug in the Strava segment for your favorite climb and see how many laps, the total distance and how long it'll take you.
My hope is to do this a few times in May/June, perhaps eventually working up to an "official" Everesting attempt either on this hill or another.
For both of my regular readers, you might be saying to yourself "I thought he was injured". Well, firstly you shouldn't talk to yourself so much, people are beginning to wonder about you. But you're right, I am recovering from a severe Soleus strain. Given that, this sort of effort seems borderline foolhardy.
But here's how I'm rationalizing it:
- I'm taking it slow. My plan between now and early May is to start off with a small number of reps and gradually increase it. I've gone out to Bunker Hill twice. The first time I did 4 repetitions, the second time I did 6. Next time, I'll do 8 (I'm seeing a trend here...).
- TBH, my real motivation is to give myself a bit of focus. The brevet season is shot to hell, all the events I've been looking forward to have either been cancelled or were unwise (the Murray 1200K in March) due to injury, etc.
- No big deal if I don't make 10K feet or even half that
- The real goal is to have a target to aim for.
The plan
Well, other than going up the hill a bunch, it seems like a good idea to have a plan for how to go about it. Here are my thoughts so far:- the Everesting calculator says each lap will take 14 minutes
- I am going to do 4 laps (~56 minutes) then take a break
- this would give me 1328 feet per block
- I'll do 4 blocks (about 4 hours) then take a long break with about 5200' done
- Assuming I feel OK, I'll continue in similar fashion
Stay tuned!
