In the Spring of May 2019 a good friend, Carey Lowery, and I conquered our first Everesting in Tennessee. It was not easy at all and took roughly seventeen and a half hours to complete the adventure of 21 (or was it 22) ascents of our chosen climb. What made the IRL Everesting special was taking on the challenge with a friend and the gorgeous sites we were provided by the route and the near perfect day. I told myself, one and done, but as any ultra endurance athlete knows, those thoughts quickly fade, usually.
Fast forward a year later, and Carey took on a virtual Everesting challenge on Zwift and not only that but she turned it into a charity event. If you are going to suffer, why not get some good out of it! Bravo Carey. The timing was not to be for me but I did a BaseCamp vEveresting about a month before and knew completing the full would be a serious challenge.
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Near the end of 2020, I broke myself. Too much running, never wanting to take take any recovery days even though my coach would always layer them into my plan, and I landed myself three stress fractures. One in the right Iliac Crest, one in right pubis bone, and the mother of all .. one in the left femoral shaft. And because that wasn't enough I was also diagnosed with two completely separate areas of Tendinopathy. How did all this happen, I wondered to myself. To summarize a year long story, that continues to this day, I hooked up with not only a Nutritionist (Rebecca McConville) and a great Physical Therapist that has a ton of knowledge in Bone Density and Bone Health, but I was pushed to seek counseling from a Sport Psychologist (Riley Nickols). From the first session I was diagnosed with RED-S. If you have never heard of it, look it up, especially if you are an ultra endurance athlete. Rebecca is the only one, that I am aware of, that has written a book on the subject which I own and have read. RED-S stands for Relative Energy Deficiency Syndrome. It is essentially an amalgamation of symptoms that all lead back to the individual not fueling properly that ends up putting the individual into a very serious energy deficit, so much so that, as Rebecca would say, your body is caching energy checks that the body is unable to pay! In the end I was suffering from Disordered Eating and Exercise addition. This will take years and years to work through and will likely be something that I have to learn to manage. Thinner is not always faster and many times stronger is faster. Understand that I share this not for sympathy or critical comments of how I did this to myself (which I absolutely did), but so that others can understand that this is absolutely a thing in the ultra endurance world and if you think you fall into this category, then seek help. Heck, hit me up to talk!
Ok, enough of the personal stuff ... on to the vEveresting!
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About a month or so leading up the ride I wanted to practice the climb and get comfortable with it, makes sense, right? Keep in mind that some time earlier this year I purchased an AppleTV because my old laptop (I think it is something like nearing 10 years old) would randomly crash and that's no bueno when it comes to indoor training, especially for long rides. The AppleTV unit is awesome as it has all the apps that I like to use, Zwift and TrainerRoad but I mostly use it for Zwifting. I will get back to that in a minute.
My chosen climb for the full vEveresting was of course going to be Alpe Du'Zwift. It takes mortals like myself about 1-1:15 hours to climb it (I have seen times as fast as 37-minutes) and on the descent the bike will descend on it's own. It's legal, with reference to the vEveresting rules) to get off the bike for the descent to take a break off the trainer. Why this is legal I do not understand, but hey ... I'm taking full advantage of that!! A day or tow later I would climb it twice, and then maybe a day or so later I would make one ascent, then three ascents, and so on. The day before Thanksgiving climbed the Alpe 5 times for a BaseCamp (half an Everesting). It took me seven hours and 20 minutes, ouch! That means that a full Everesting would take me roughly 14+ hours. #craptastic
In order to give myself ever advantage that I could possible have, I switched bikes from my mountain bike which obviously has great gear selection with a 1x11 (10-42T) and a 32T ring to my new gravel rig, a Diverge that has a 10-50T cassette and a 42T ring. When i looked at the gear inches, this all made sense because I was not using anywhere near the entire range on the MTB and I should need to do that on the Diverge either. After swapping the bikes (and buying the XD driver for my KickR Core Smart Trainer) I hoped on the bike and shot up the Alpe climb like a cannon. Seriously, not sure what the difference was, but perhaps it was the buttery smooth drive train. Who knows. Over a span of a month I was setting PRs on climb sections every time I ascended the Alpe. This is great!! I had so much confidence building up that I knew I could knock the full vEveresting out in no time at all (I mean within reason of course)!! I even set a fastest PR, while not burying myself, at just under one hour.
So, here is where my demise came into play. First, I had switched my MTB over to being a single speed setup, which meant that if I wanted to put it back on the trainer I would have to undo that work which I really thought I would not need to even consider at this point. Second, the rule of Everesting are clear and cannot be refuted. Two very important rules are 1) you must weigh-in the morning of your attempt and update your settings. I'm at a hefty 155lbs these days (not thanks to that Eating Disorder that I am battling) and 2) you must be running Zwift at 100% difficulty. Remember when I mentioned that I had bough a new AppleTV to replace my laptop? The setting on the laptop was at 100% ... care to guess where the AppleTV was set? Yup, the default ... 50% difficulty.
<play dark music that sounds like when the nasty looking creature enters the room to eat the souls of it's victims> #totalyrookiemistake
When did I make this horrific realization? The afternoon before my vEveresting attempt. Needless to say I was beside myself. Stressing out. I of course absolutely set it to 100%, but had zero experience on this bike, with the gearing, climbing the Alpe prior to taking on the biggest trainer ride I have ever done in one shot. #doublecraptastic
The morning of the attempt I got up at 3:15am. I did not want to put off the suffering any longer. Ate my oats, drank the always awesome and wonderful team sponsor Christopher Bean Coffee, did my yoga (yes that's been a thing now for a couple months), let the pup out and back in, and headed to the basement for what felt like would be an eternity of mental anguish. I spun up the two fans immediately, turned on Zwift, calibrated the KickR smart trainer with a cold spin-down, flipped on the music over the bluetooth speaker, and started pedaling. After completing the 9-10 minute lead up from the Jungle Route onto the first climb I VERY quickly came to the realization that I would be SO screwed. Click ... up a gear ... click .. up another gear ... click, click, click ... crap ... at the top of my rear cassettes in the easier cog and pushing out more watts than I wanted to be. Whelp ... new plan ... let's see how this first climb feels. I wasn't setting personal records (PRs) nor was I trying on this type of a ride. My time wasn't terrible but the entire climb my brain was feeding me negative thoughts. Way's I could explain to my friends that it wasn't in the cards.
On a personal note and to all my friends, I rarely tell anyone that I attempting these types of things. Don't take it personal if I don't say anything, it's just in my nature. For me, I need to do them, often times, on my own. I live a LOT in my own head and if I fail at something I do not want to have to explain to anyone why I failed. I only want to have to tell myself that I failed. It's easier for me that way. As an example, when I ran my first 100k trail run, I withheld this fact from my wife, who is the most important person in my life. I seriously struggle having to explain to people about my failures. All that said, ever since das'covid I have been finding myself seeking to ride or run with others more often. The whole thing is turning this life long introvert into an extrovert.
Anyway, the gearing selection was terrible given the 100% difficulty setting. It was probably a good thing that I was doing this deal solo. It would have been mentally harder for me to have someone with me, in person. The good thing is that there was 5-6 other riders online doing the Alpe climb. I got wind of this when the chatter started to come across the Zwift program and I got to read the great comments and encouragement. I started giving those folks Thumbs Up (it's a way to show support and encouragement to others in the Zwift. This had the effect of them returning the favor. When someone gives you a Thumbs Up it shows up as a big blue Thumb and they collect in the back of your jersey. My jersey quickly began to fill up and by the time I finished I swear all those blue thumbs in my jersey were slowing me down. LOL One of the guys was attempting a Double Everesting. Nuts!! He was really friendly and we chatted a few times back and forth. All this really helped me mentally, knowing someone else was suffering alongside me, attempting to conquer the same thing.
After the first ascent was completed I had a bit of a technical issue, which was another one of my biggest fears. If you lose your internet connection, you are essentially screwed, sort of. You can take pics as you make you way through the attempt in the hopes that if you lose your power or internet connect that you have some sort of proof that you had climbs some amount of elevation. Fortunately I never lost my internet connection but at the bottom of the first descent and as I started to make the second climb something very "wonky" happened with my bluetooth connection for the KickR power. I was climbing but my power was showing only 30-40 watts. I was working my butt of but seeing no progress, then the power went to zero. WTH?!?! In a panic I for some reason was thinking the power meter battery on the bike had died so I replaced the battery, but why the heck would that have anything to do with the KickR?? Yup, definitely not thinking straight at this point. I tried paring with the bike power meter but that didn't do much good either. Had to mess with it for about 5-minutes before it began working again. I almost stopped Zwift to save what i had done by accident. Zwift started to count down to end my current ride and I was like ... holy crap NOOOO!!!! Realizing my mistake I was able to navigate back to my ride and continue. That definitely shook me up but within a few checkpoints I was back at it and the power was registering properly. My cadence paring was also not working right and that also got annoying because while I was spinning at 85 (ish) rpm it was registering in Zwift as 45 rpm. Any time the rpm drops below 70rpm the avatar starts to right out of the saddle. That got annoying but after a while I was able to repair the cadence and all was good for the rest of the ride. Damn near had a panic attack on that one.
Only half way?? Holy crap. I had been eating the entire time. I had such a plethora of food choices that it was actually a bit overwhelming. I wanted to have so many options that the food was to be a fun part of the ride. I wanted to eat something different for every ascent, which almost happened. I ate poptarts on the first climb (in the past this would have been unheard of for me to consume), a Cliff bar on the second climb, sea salt and gluten free crackers on the third climb (these were just ok ... not as tasty and the box made them look), and mini pancakes on the fourth climb (those were really tasty). By the end of the fourth climb my time wasn't too terrible being at the start of the fifth climb in five hours and thirty-five minutes. The legs were not happy and while getting off the bike for the descents was a great way to stretch and refill my bottles, it also made for getting back on the bike and starting to spin that much harder. I knew I had completed five climbs only a few weeks ago but that was of course on a different bike and at 50% difficulty. I did my best to get into a rhythm and it usually took to reach the 3rd or 4rth checkpoint for me to find my mojo again. I had been getting to the roughly halfway point in around 30-minutes and to the top in anywhere between one hour and 6-minutes to one hours and 10-12 minutes with the time getting slower and slower as this ride progressed. Now I had read from a few others that have completed this that they would do all sorts of things while the bike was descending on it's own, which takes about 11 minutes. That gives the rider 11-minutes of "free time". Technically I can do whatever I want with one exception, no sleeping. So naturally, I launched upstairs to take a VERY cold shower. Oh.My.Gosh. did that feel GREAT!! I could tell I was overheating in the basement, even with two fans pointing directly at me (one in the front and one off to the side and back of me), my forehead had felt like it continued to get hot and I just had a very hard time staying cool.
Cleaned, cooled off, new kit, and a new lease on life ... sort of. I also grabbed a washcloth and soaked it on cold water, refilled my bottles, pulled out some salted soft pretzels I made the yesterday and still had enough time to stretch a couple minutes before the bike was nearing the bottom. I would get on the bike when the bike was within a mile of the bottom so that I could start to warm up my legs again by spinning. Turned around, and up, up, up for a sixth time. This was new territory for me. Up until this point I had only ever climbed the Alpe five times. In some ways I was enjoying the climb now. I have broken into the unknown, I felt amazingly cooled off thanks to the shower, and I was starting to count down the remaining climbs, even though I knew I wanted nine full ascents which meant that I needed four more climbs. Ouch. The chatter had quieted down a lot at this point. I think everyone was getting into their own rhythm and also getting tired. I got tired of listening to some of the more progressive music stations on Sirius XM and flipped over to Classic Rock. Ahhhh, that was so much better!! I continued to focus on each of the individual checkpoints, ticking them off one at a time. Well-versed with the sections that were mind-numbing and the ones that would go by quickly or give my legs a break with longer sections of 4-6% grade vs. some sections that seemed relentless at 10-14% grade. I learned to hate the first two checkpoints (21 & 20), learned to look forward to checkpoint 6 (even though it was the longest at .73-miles it had the longest section of an easier grade so I could spin more), and learned to hate sections 7-10 because they were do very mind-numbing as I worked my way to checkpoint 6. I could not get 7-10 done fast enough! Check ... another climb down and on to the 7th ascent!! Yipee!!
At this point I was into the afternoon and looking for lunch-type food. Being as prepared as I was, I popped over the container of Potato filled Pierogis and started to munch on them during my 11-minute break. Jessie has also stopped down nearing the end of the sixth climb (so awesome to have her home for the holidays!!) and she graciously filled up my large water jug I was using to refill my bottles. Only 2.5 ascents left!! Of course, I knew I wanted to complete the last climb and not just bail half way up. This was one way that my friend Carey was unknowingly pushing me. She had completed the full 9th climb so of course ... I had to do at least as much. The legs were barking a lot at this point, but I just put my head down and forged ahead. I was telling myself that if I only HAVE to do one more full ascent after the 7th completed climb. This helped me mentally more than I could have hoped. While my times continued to get slower due to my poor gearing selection, I did not let up and was still within a few sections of all the checkpoints. My power output was down in the 170-180s but so be it. I was overheating and my HR was hitting Zone one, just no energy left to get it into Z2. Not that I had to, but I know when my heartrate dips into Z2 and I am working hard that my body is nearly the end of what it has left in the tank. Check!! Finished the 7th climb and hoped off for my 11-minutes of bliss. One more full ascent that I had to do, technically!! Heck yay man!!
At some point I knew my long time friend Eric would be coming over to check on me and possibly bringing his bike and trainer to ride with me for a bit. Yes, I knew I said I like to do these things solo, but when I get to the point where I think I have the thing in the bag then I am fine to have others join in. I guess I mostly like to suffer on my own. When I see that I will actually complete a challenge, my mind starts to ease up. As I was making my way up to the top of the 8th climb, maybe just over half way, ever so slowly grinding it out (at times at a pathetic 16-170 watts), my buddy starts coming down the stairs (I had left the front door unlocked knowing he was going to pop in at some point). His timing could not have been more perfect. As he was setting up his bike and trainer I was nearing checkpoint 5, then checkpoint, 3, then 2, then 1 just as he was getting on his bike to ride. This meant I had someone to ride with for my last ascent. Very cool!! The mental break of chatting with what was going on with him, explaining this crazy this I was doing, and just having my long time best friend next to me was a huge boost! I mean, so no much that i was pulling out 200 watts sort of boost, but a boost nonetheless. When I passed the 29,020 feet of total elevation Zwift popped up the banner stating that I had completed the challenge. I want to say that I was at checkpoint 10 (the checkpoints go from 21 down to 1) and I turned to Eric and said ... only 10 left. The thing about Everesting is that you do NOT want to leave anything to chance. You just spent numerous hours of pain and suffering to get to that point and you don't want to stop only to find out that some oddity along the way meant that you just missed the mark. For example, that beginning section, at the very start, that I had to ride to get to the bottom to the first ascent likely had "some" amount of elevation to it and that elevation, as little as it may be, cannot be included in to the total Everesting elevation. The rule of Everesting are clear and cannot be refuted. So, to put the nail in the coffin on this one and to get that 9th final ascent as my friend Carey had done, I was going to finish that 9th climb. It finally happened in roughly one hour and 15 minutes. Instead of immediately dismounting and letting the bike descent I spent some time spinning my legs on the final descent to try and reduce the chance of them locking up and me falling over when I dismounted the bike.
Man, what a challenge! Sooo flipping hard mentally and with my poor gearing selection very hard physically as well. Not that this would going to be physically easy, ever, but it could have been easier. My total time was twelve hours and 45 minutes with a ride time of 12 hours and 39 minutes with a total elevation of 30,700 feet. Well above the Everesting challenge requirement. Also realize that with 9 ascents that is also 9 descents and with 11 minutes per descent it means that the total time off the bike was roughly 100 minutes or 1-hour and 40-minutes. That also means I was on the bike trainer for at the rest of that time at roughly 11-hours. #facepalm
Of course, no big adventure is complete without a bit of indulgence of the pizza kind. I got to enjoy one of my favorite local pizza joints with my daughter and friend Eric!! That was a treat!! Oh and some ice cream may have met it's match as well.
So that one is done and dusted. Not sure I will ever do a virtual Everesting again ... but then again ... maybe? #shrug #neversaynever
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