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What Is Everesting? | Cycling Challenges


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road bike with mountain background

Cycling challenges such as Everesting, and yes that’s what it’s called, are a great way to challenge yourself and compete with your friends. Everesting isn’t an easy feat tho, you should definitely train and prepare before taking on this challenge. Everesting is riding the height of Mount Everest on a ride that isn’t riding up Mt. Everest.

I’m gonna take a wild guess you can’t actually ride up Mount Everest, so, if that’s what you’re thinking people have been doing, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. If you somehow manage to ride up the real Mt. Everest please send me a video and submit yourself to the Guinness World Record book because that would be crazy! Since that’s unlikely, the cycling community has the challenge of riding the height of Mt. Everest from anywhere in the world.

Some people tackle a local hill and others use Zwift to climb the height of Everest in their own home. Whichever works for you is great, just make sure that you either log your ride on Strava or on Zwift. If you don’t many people won’t believe that you actually completed the Challenge. As the saying goes “if it isn’t on Strava then it didn’t happen”. Strava is a fitness tracking app that also functions as a social media platform. You can use it to track your rides, share with friends and compete against friends.

Everesting has been around for years but due to people having to social distance this last year because of COVID-19 this became a perfect challenge for pros and advanced cyclists to conquer in their free time. Taking on the Everest challenge is no simple task. The world record is around 7 hours and 40 minutes but the average person will take 13+ hours to complete this challenge. That’s a long time to be riding a bike even on flat ground. So, riding up a hill for 7-13+ hours is absolutely insane.

Preparing for Everesting

Everesting isn’t something you want to just hop into, if you do, you probably won’t complete the ride and you could end up hurting yourself. Just like any other big ride, you want to work your way up to it and train for it. You also want to make sure that you’re prepared for the ride in terms of supplies such as cycling snacks and food, water, and electrolytes. Having a car on the hill with extra supplies and snacks is a great idea.

Also with how long you’ll be riding, you definitely want to make sure that you have all the tools that you need to repair flats or fix small things on your bike. When riding longer distances or for long periods of time, you have a higher chance of something breaking on your bike. It’s better to be prepared and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Don’t forget Everesting is a marathon not a race, if you come out pushing yourself hard, you WILL burn out! Unless you’re Phil Gaimon making an attempt at the record. I wouldn’t recommend worrying too much about your time ride at a pace that you feel you can maintain for hours on end.

Cycling Snacks

Check The Weather

Make sure you check the weather before you make an Everest attempt. You can use the website Headwind to see which way the wind will be blowing and at what speed, this can help plan rides in general, but it will be crucial in successfully completing your Everest challenge. You don’t want to get hit with 20-30 mph winds when you’re making an attempt at Everesting.

Everesting Challenge Rules

There’s a few rules you have to follow for your Everest attempt to actually count.

First, obviously, your total elevation climbed must be equal to the height of Mount Everest. Mount Everest stands at 8,848 meters or 29,029 feet.

The ride must be done in a single session. You’re obviously allowed to take breaks but no sleep breaks. I don’t think anyone should be riding 7-16 hours straight through with no breaks. That’s a wide range of time, but it’s accurate, the record holders are somewhere in the 7 hour range while the more average times are 13+ hours to complete the challenge.

The route must be a single hill which you ride up and down. You can’t ride a loop. When you think about it, this makes sense, if you found the perfect loop that gives you momentum for the climb, you could slaughter this challenge. In order to keep the challenge fair, you have to get to the bottom of your hill then turn around and come back up. This way you’re actually climbing the full height of Everest, not letting momentum climb it for you.

Have I Done The Everest Challenge?

I honestly hadn’t considered Everesting, I don’t do crazy climbs, but recently I’ve been considering working up to it. First, I want to work up to my first century ride. I’m in Southern California and wanted to go to the Solvang Century ride but it’s been postponed indefinitely due to COVID and them not being able to get the permits needed.

So, I’ll probably end up just doing a century on my own or with friends rather than at an event. I’ve done a Fondo with a 3,100 feet elevation gain on my fixed gear bike. So, on my road bike, I’m sure I could do a century ride and climb a lot higher than that, just haven’t got around to doing it.

I enjoy riding my fixed gear bike so for the most part, I take that for my rides even if it’s a pretty long ride. If I Everest, it will 100% be on my road bike tho, that would be insane on a fixed gear. I’m in pretty good shape, but I definitely need to work my way up to Everesting.

Conclusion

Everesting is a great challenge to push your limits but make sure you adequately prepare for the ride. You need snacks, food, water, and other supplies in addition to proper training to be able to make the full ride. Everesting is climbing the height of Mount Everest (8,848 meters) in a single ride with no long-term breaks/sleeping. You can take breaks but it should overall be 1 continuous ride. Also, the route can’t be a loop, you have to ride the same hill up and down. That way you can’t gain momentum to ride up the hill.

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