I don't think I could do the bike challenge in one day. I'm not even able to think about it on foot
I don't think I could do the bike challenge in one day. I'm not even able to think about it on foot
Yes, have *thought* about it on the bike ... enough to spend time searching for hills and doing some practice sessions. My conclusion was that, with the best hills in my area averaging around 8%, that it would take me 12hrs +/- 1Hr (well, if I fall apart at hour 9.5, then could be a lot more). Either way, that’s more time than I am willing to ride in a day, so have shelved it until I find a better hill or better climbing legs.
I think the tips are that you want as close to ~10% hill as possible, with relatively little variability. You want a good road surface and a relaxed easy descent. Someplace to park. 34 or 36 x 32 gearing, if not easier. Practice nutrition, probably minimum 300kCal, and ~2bottles per hour.
This would be 54 miles ascending a 10% grade hill. If you go straight back down the same way you came up, this would require 108 miles - one length of the hill (as the challenge would be completed at the top). There probably is an 10.8 mile long road, or longer somewhere with that average grade, meaning you're still going almost 100 miles. This can be done in a day by someone who has specifically trained for it for months.
Of course, if vertical climbing is allowed, or a steeper incline is used, the distance one would need to go would decrease, though perhaps more training would be needed. A 10% grade is very tough, but many could train to hike or run it for a day straight over the course of months.
I have been to the Everest basecamp on foot. What a fun trek that was.
I spent two nights at base camp a couple of years ago. Got the Khumbu cough during the hike up. Took me two months to get over it. Took just a few hours to run back down to Namche Bazaar.
tritaycan wrote:
Yes, have *thought* about it on the bike ... enough to spend time searching for hills and doing some practice sessions. My conclusion was that, with the best hills in my area averaging around 8%, that it would take me 12hrs +/- 1Hr (well, if I fall apart at hour 9.5, then could be a lot more). Either way, that’s more time than I am willing to ride in a day, so have shelved it until I find a better hill or better climbing legs.
Pretty much my thought as well. There are some nice hills less than a kilometre from my house which would be very good options for the challenge, but I just don't know whether I want to spend about 12 hours on this. Maybe over the Christmas holidays it might be a nice thing to try.
Backpacker wrote:
I have been to the Everest basecamp on foot. What a fun trek that was.
I've been to the Everest Base Camp a couple of times, the last being in 2000, as well as Kala Pattar. I don't think there is any real similarity to doing this "virtually" as compared to actually doing it.
Thanks for the replies... I have hiked several thousand feet in a day. Run a marathon over 5k ft and done Rim to Rim. My best bike ride is under 10k. Generally I prefer to run or ride hills.
I think finding the ideal riding surface/grade and distance to repeat will be a bit of trial and error. Fortunately aerodynamics shouldn't be an issue on the bike
When that guy broke the record recently, I thought "I should try this!"
Then I did the math and changed my mind. It sounds really tough. I looked at 1 or 2 hour rides I've done to find the fastest vertical gain climbs I've done. Using those as a baseline, it would take me a solid 14 hours or so to "everest." But in reality, I wouldn't be climbing as fast as I do when I go for a 2 hour ride, so realistically 16+ hours.
The longest ride I've done is 5 hours. I'd have to put in serious seat time to have a chance at finishing.
Yes. On foot, 500-700' gain every half hour. Rest in between, maybe get a golf cart driver to drive you back to the bottom in between repeats, lay down with legs up and close eyes before each start. Easy peasy, breakfast greasy.
I did the Alyeska Climbathon a couple times in the 2010s. Uphill at a downhill ski area; just over 2,000' vertical gain each lap (something like 2.2 miles per lap); take the tram back down (ca. 5min descent time); start your next lap. There's a 10-hour cutoff for this particular race; both times I did it I covered 10 laps ("Denali in a Day") in a little over 9 hours, but wouldn't have finished lap #10 before the cutoff, and so called it there.
It was hard, but honestly not as hard as I'd thought it would be. I ran something like 10% of the total climb, maybe 15%, not that much. Obviously going down by tram is a huge advantage (and "allowed" under the official rules for foot, if not for bicycling, per link below), both for getting back down to the bottom of the mountain in just 5min and for not having to do all that pounding. My legs felt surprisingly damn fresh the day after both times.
I think it would have been more than 50% harder to up that to 15 laps to hit 30,000' and call it Everesting, but not super hard. Maybe take me around 16 hours total? I'd love to see the resort run the tram all "night" long in an Alaska summer and see what people could do.
Gilligainz wrote:
Yes. On foot, 500-700' gain every half hour. Rest in between, maybe get a golf cart driver to drive you back to the bottom in between repeats, lay down with legs up and close eyes before each start. Easy peasy, breakfast greasy.
... or you could pay $4,195 (?!) to, uh, have someone tell you how to find yourself or some such sh*t, and give you a fancy tent for a few nights. Points to golf cart guy; he's got the right idea (although my experience at Alyeska suggests that more than 1,000-1,400 gain/hour is quite feasible - 2,000 feet/hour makes it a 15-hour enterprise, which is a long time on your feet but doesn't get you into sleep deprivation territory). Hell, you could pay the golf cart driver $95 for their time, spend $100 on booze for when you were done (or, like, Perpetuem for during), and save yourself $4,000.
Seriously, wtf is this:
https://29029everesting.com/tickets/Gilligainz wrote:
Yes. On foot, 500-700' gain every half hour. Rest in between, maybe get a golf cart driver to drive you back to the bottom in between repeats, lay down with legs up and close eyes before each start. Easy peasy, breakfast greasy.
You could do something like this in a skyscraper -- walk up the stairs, take the elevator down. I personally wouldn't want to spend a long day in a stairwell like that, but whatever pushes your buttons (down button, especially).
907 born wrote:
https://29029everesting.com/tickets/
$4200!
Is that for real?
There is no way that these sold out.
For that money you can easily spend a month in Nepal and do the Everest trek.
Gilligainz wrote:
Yes. On foot, 500-700' gain every half hour. Rest in between, maybe get a golf cart driver to drive you back to the bottom in between repeats, lay down with legs up and close eyes before each start. Easy peasy, breakfast greasy.
You can't do that and be "officially" recognized. One hill, and you must ride down and repeat. Even when you hit your elevation goal, you just ride back down and at that point get an official time (I don't agree with it, but that's what it is).
I've thought about it too, but there are no hills in central Ohio that would allow for a long enough climb. I just couldn't do one hill like 80 times.
I'd probably go to Whiteface Mountain in NY for an attempt. The type of hill suits my characteristic. Not too steep, but long and good for rhythm riding, and you only have to do it like 8.5 times.
You can't do that and be "officially" recognized.
You can't for cycling, you can for running -
https://everesting.cc/run-rules/under "descending."
(I think you were talking about cycling already, so please don't take this as "I'm being a jerk, here's a correction," so much as "in case someone else is following all this, here are the 'official' rules.")
I completed an Everest recently on my bike. I am a runner by trade but have been cycling a lot to gain more CV fitness for base. I will say that it was A LOT harder than I thought. I’ve done a lot of challenging things but this was next level. The sleep deprivation and the heat for me is what did me in. I completed it (beat 2 of the guys) but it wasn’t pretty the last few reps. I did Reddish Knob, WV so it was about 2400 ft elevation gain and 6.7 miles up. I had truck at the top with cooler and aid. I did it with 3 other guys but we all did our own thing. If you’re considering, make sure you have the right cassette if your hill is anything >5% which most will be. For me, the descent was almost worse than climbing because I’m not used to biking down mountains and hairpin turns that fast. Also, I would start with a half Everest attempt first to get a feel for that much climbing. I did my 1/2 Everest 2 weeks before and then a 200 miler flat route 4 weeks before as prep. Had been running 50 miles per week with cycling 100-200 miles per week to prepare.
Backpacker wrote:
907 born wrote:
https://29029everesting.com/tickets/$4200!
Is that for real?
There is no way that these sold out.
For that money you can easily spend a month in Nepal and do the Everest trek.
Agreed! You'll have way more fun doing that in real time. It's also a lot safer and cheaper to go independently instead of with a guide/trekking company because you can go at your acclimatization rate and not the group rate.
Just found this, read it, cringed a lot:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2369976/Jesse-Itzler-Everest-Sized-Hike
Upon review, you couldn't pay me $4,200 to do this event. Whatever personal value or insight I get from endurance sport - and no snark, that's very real, even if it's somewhat difficult to quantify at times - feels pretty antithetical with a packaged, commercialized, extremely expensive corporate endeavor.
Good to hear from someone who's actually done it, while the rest of us just sit around and armchair-QB it (guilty as charged). It makes sense that it's hard. It feels, thinking out loud here, like it falls in that sweet spot of amateur athlete artificial challenges: hard enough that not everyone can do it (either at all, or at least not the first time), "easy" enough that at least it is obtainable, at a rate orders of magnitude higher than something like Barkley.
Anyway, though, well done. I've definitely been thinking about this (prob. foot), and appreciate your take. There's a lot of bro-y accounts out there; I'm pleased to find one that's a little more straightforward.