A Sub-12 Hour Everest Biking Attempt

Cycling Weekly

Stefan successfully completed a sub-12 hour Everest attempt and here's what he learnt.

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name's Stefan Abraham. I joined the Cycling Weekly Tech team last year and

00:03towards the tail end of the winter just been, I decided to have a go at Everest

00:07Ting up one of my local climbs. Having managed to successfully complete it, I

00:10thought that I'd share a little bit about what goes into choosing the climb

00:13and pacing the effort and yeah, much else besides.

00:22I was going through a sub-12 hour time. It has a nice room to it. It's half day out on the bike

00:26and with six factors, it's easily divisible. You can break it down into

00:30thirds, into quarters, into halves, lots of milestones to check off on the wave but

00:34obviously pleasing arithmetic isn't the only consideration when it comes to

00:38setting a target and I went out to the climb a few weeks previous and the data

00:41that I got showed that 12 hours was certainly possible but the margin for

00:45error was really quite small. So one thing that has really been underlined to me is

00:48really the importance of a hill. It's much more important than the bike or any

00:52prior training. You can be as fit as you like with this fancier bike but if you're

00:56on a rubbish hill then it's going to be difficult to get a good time or even

00:59complete it at all. And equally if your fitness isn't quite where you want it to

01:02be and your bike isn't the lightest, a well chosen hill can help provide a much

01:06more flattering time. So there are three factors I think that are most important

01:10regarding the hill. The first is the gradient and then the road condition and

01:13then the traffic. With the gradient I think it's well accepted now that the steeper

01:17the hill the better. I think that a while ago there were some that would argue that a more

01:20moderate gradient would be friendly on the legs and therefore better suited to an

01:23endurance effort but ultimately it is a climbing challenge so if you can

01:26maximise the metres gained and minimise the kilometres travelled you're going to

01:30end up with a faster time. With the road condition this can be split into two

01:34different areas. One is the actual surface of the road and the other is the bends

01:37and so obviously the smoother the road is the less rolling resistance you're going

01:41to have to overcome but also when you're descending the less jarring it will

01:45feel on your hands which can make a significant difference towards the end of

01:48the effort. When it comes to the route that the road takes down the hill it's good to have

01:51one which doesn't have any particularly nasty bends like 90 degree hairpins or

01:56anything particularly narrow. Those looking for the very fastest times will be

02:00looking for a road which is arrow straight and doesn't require touching the

02:03brakes at all on the way down. So with regards to my hill I wouldn't say it was the

02:06perfect one but I think it hit each of the criteria well enough that it

02:10definitely wasn't a bad choice to use. The gradient average 10% which by today's

02:13standards isn't a particularly steep hill to Everest on people are going on 15 or

02:1820%. However talking about the average gradient can hide the true nature of the

02:21hill. Mine wasn't particularly consistent there are some sections which were quite

02:25flat and other sections which really ramped up but to be honest although that

02:29might not make it the most efficient climb I find that the changes in gradient

02:32made it a lot more enjoyable to ascend time after time. The need to change gear and

02:36go in and out the saddle made it a lot more interesting and engaging than just

02:39slogging for 10 minutes in a single gear straight up and straight down and yeah not

02:42having to think at all. Regarding the road condition that's kind of a story of

02:46two halves. On the top part of the climb the tarmac is completely smooth and couldn't

02:50really be better but down near the bottom there are some fairly large potholes and

02:54the surface itself is just very washboardy and rough. I had 20mm tyres on

02:58which did go some way to smoothing out the surface but by the end I was really

03:03feeling it in my hands. Regarding the traffic it isn't a through road there's a

03:07car park at the top and maybe a farmhouse just along the path a little bit and so

03:11you wouldn't expect there to be too many cars but I found when I cycled down that it was

03:14quite a bit busier than I would like. Fortunately though I had the flexibility to do the attempt

03:18on a Friday and that went a long way to cutting down the number of cars. And so in all I was

03:24pretty happy with the climb. The gradient and the road surface weren't too bad and

03:27nor was the traffic but although I do have local hills that are best for each one of

03:30these criteria I think Phil Boster was the best for all of them overall.

03:34So a little bit about the bike. Well the first thing to point out is it wasn't so much the challenge

03:38dictating the bike but the bike dictating the challenge. I had the 2021 Bianchi Sprint on

03:43test and when I noticed that the bottom gear was a 1 to 1 ratio with a 33 tooth chainring

03:48and a 33 tooth sprocket on the cassette but I thought the opportunity for an everesting

03:52was too good to pass up. As this is just a completely stock setup there are some aspects

03:57of the bike which aren't ideal for an everesting. So starting with the heart of the bike the

04:01frame. It's got a full carbon construction the frame and the fork but as the name Sprint might

04:06suggest there's a lot more of a focus on aerodynamics and power transfer than there is on minimising

04:10the weight. And altogether this bike comes in at just over 8 kilos which isn't exactly

04:14feathery but then it's not so heavy that it was going to make or break the attempt.

04:19Coming now to the groupset we've got the SRAM Force Axis 2x12. I think that hydraulic disc

04:23brakes really lend themselves to an everesting attempt. Rim brakes might be lighter but with

04:28the disc brakes the lighter lever action. With the amount of braking that an everesting requires

04:32being able to just pull yourself to a stop with a single finger is a lot less

04:36fatiguing when you're deep into the effort. For me I think the most important thing when

04:40it comes to bike setup for an everesting has got to be the gearing. As steep climbs are

04:44so much more efficient for completing the challenge in as quick a time as possible you need to

04:48have gears that will allow you to turn a reasonable cadence while at a sustainable wattage. And

04:53for me on my hill that meant it was absolutely imperative that I did have at least a 1-1 bottom

04:58gear. And even that was treading a little bit of a tightrope. At the top of the hill when the

05:02gradient ramps up for a final time I was finding that I'd either have to push a little bit

05:06too high of a wattage or grind a little bit more than I'd want to. And so there's lots

05:10of one tooth jumps between the smaller sprockets but as you move out to the easier gears the

05:15jumps between the gears get a little bit larger. Now ordinarily I think that this is great.

05:20You've got those small jumps when you're in the bigger gears and working hard and when

05:23it comes to the steep climbs. You've got the range and it doesn't really matter so much

05:27about having a bigger jump because at that point you kind of want an easier gear whatever

05:31it is. If I was speccing the bike myself I probably would have gone for Shimano's GRX

05:35groupset and an 11-32 cassette. Not only would that have given me a lower bottom gear but

05:41for the final three sprockets it goes 25-28-32 and those smaller jumps really would have made

05:47I think a pretty big difference. Coming now to the tyres they were the Toria's Rubino model

05:52in a size 28mm and I have to say I was very happy with them. They're not as lightweight or

05:57as fast as the Corsa model. They're by no means bad in either department and the extra robustness

06:02they have as a consequence meant that I didn't get any punctures for the entire effort. I was

06:07running inner tubes rather than tubeless and I think that for us to do it again I'd definitely

06:10change to tubeless. Particularly on that hill with the rough section down at the bottom being

06:15able to drop a few psi and have a bit of a smoother ride would have made a very large difference

06:19towards the end. So coming to my training it wasn't too specific I didn't know that I was going

06:23to be doing an everything until a couple of weeks before when I happened to have a bike that was

06:27well suited to the challenge. Over Christmas I had completed the festive 500 and so that

06:31put a fair bit of volume into my legs and through January and February I've been combining Zwift

06:35racing with some long endurance rides and I think that combination of intensity and longer

06:39steady efforts had a good effect on my fitness leading up to it. Climbing hills with a similar

06:43gradient to Phil Bostol would have really helped but pedalling kinematics when you're going up

06:47something so steep at an endurance all day pace are quite different to any of the other riding

06:51I was doing and so although I had the base fitness I found that it was my joints that really started

06:56to suffer by the end of the effort. With the nutrition I was keeping things simple I had

07:00just three different fuels I had an SIS energy powder for my water bottles along with some

07:05chocolate mini rolls for that fast release energy and the final food I had was that staple of

07:10a long distance effort the sausage roll. I got most of my calories from the powder I found that I

07:15couldn't really eat while going up the climb it was just a bit too steep and to be honest my

07:19appetite for solid food wasn't the greatest but even so I made sure that every two hours I'd have a quick

07:23stop at the top and grab a sausage roll and a mini roll just to keep my stomach settled as I find that

07:28I can start to suffer from cramps if I'm on an only liquid diet. I think that I did get the fueling

07:33spot on I couldn't have consumed anymore I was on the verge of being too full throughout the whole

07:37thing but even then I'd only taken on about 4,300 calories through the duration of the effort

07:42whilst Java reckons that I burned 8,000 calories. Coming now into the weather another reason for wanting

07:48to get some 12 hours was because I wanted to minimise the amount of time that I would be riding

07:52at night. Doing the Everest thing at the end of the winter meant that I would have to do some laps

07:57in the dark. With weather conditions it obviously really helps for it to be dry on the day. The rain

08:01just adds all sorts of complications with coronary traction, braking and more difficulties with layering

08:06and keeping warm and comfortable. Fortunately the weather was stunning on the day with bright blue

08:10skies and the sun shining. As the winter still hadn't quite yet gone I was wearing bib shorts with leg

08:15warmers and a thick winter jacket when I first set off. The temperature at the beginning was around

08:19about 1 degree and descending down the hill with the cold air slamming into you you can get cold

08:24really quite quickly on the way down. But I was expecting the day to warm up and so I did bring

08:28a light away to long sleeve jersey. However what I hadn't considered is that this would be the warmest

08:32day since the autumn and even a long sleeve jersey proved to be far too hot by even as early as 10.30 in the

08:37morning. The pacing I think is one of the most important parts of being able to complete an

08:41Everest thing. It's very tempting to go out far too hard on a hill and just end up

08:45burning yourself out before you complete the effort. From my recce runs I found that I could

08:49do a full lap so up the hill and back down in about 9 minutes 50 seconds. This was right

08:54at the top of my zone 2. Although it would be hard work it suggested that the effort was

08:59certainly doable. In the first six hours I went out perhaps a little bit hard. My lap times

09:03were around about 9 minutes 30 which was a bit faster than I really needed. And the average watts

09:08I was putting out on the climb itself was about 250 which was just nudging into my zone 3 and

09:13so a little bit too intense for an all day effort. And so perhaps doing more of a negative

09:18split rather than a positive split if I had gone out slightly easier and ramped up for

09:22pace at the end I could maybe have gotten a better time. But to be honest I'm not convinced

09:26it was the wrong decision to go out as hard as I did for the first half of the effort.

09:30Mentally it really helped feeling like I was ahead of time and I wasn't plagued with anxiety

09:34about mechanicals because I knew I had a bit of buffer to play with. And when the effort did

09:37start to bite at the end of the Everest thing it was quite a relief to know that it was going

09:41to be okay if I backed off the effort a little bit. When it comes to endurance rides I tend

09:45to break things down into thirds. Before the start I was a little bit worried about how

09:49I'd be feeling around about hour 9. I find that transition between the middle and the

09:52final third can really play on your mind. With the fatigue setting in but also the knowledge

09:56that you've got to do half as much as you've already done all over again. I find that in

10:01the final sixth things tend to pick up quite a bit. The end is very much in sight by that

10:05point and it's a lot easier to carry on pushing. However this time during the Everest thing

10:09I didn't get that crunch point at the two thirds point it actually came a lot sooner. I was

10:14about seven and a half hours in and it was then that I was really starting to feel the

10:17effort. It was surprising how quickly the change did take place because just a few hours previously

10:22I was feeling as fresh as if I had just started. At five hours in I felt like I could keep on

10:26going all day no problem. So there you go that was my first Everest thing attempt. If you

10:31enjoy this video please be sure to give it a like and subscribe for more and if you have

10:34any questions just drop them in the comment section down below and I'll do my best to answer them.

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