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Stefan successfully completed a sub-12 hour Everest attempt and here's what he learnt.
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00:00Hi, my name's Stefan Abraham. I joined the Cycling Weekly Tech team last year and
00:04towards 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
00:11thought 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
00:26on 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 way 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
00:49really the importance of a hill. It's much more important than the bike or any prior
00:53training. You can be as fit as you like with this fancier bike but if you're on a
00:56rubbish 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
01:02to be and your bike isn't the lightest, a well chosen hill can help provide a
01:06much more flattering time. So there are three factors I think that are most
01:09important regarding the hill. The first is the gradient and then the road
01:12condition and then the traffic. With the gradient I think it's well accepted now
01:16that the steeper the hill the better. I think that a while ago there were some that
01:19would argue that a more moderate gradient would be friendly on the legs and
01:22therefore better suited to an endurance effort but ultimately it is a
01:25climbing challenge so if you can maximize the meters gained and minimize the
01:29kilometers traveled you're going to end up with a faster time. With the road
01:32condition this can be split into two different areas. One is the actual
01:35surface of the road and the other is bends and so obviously the smoother the
01:39road is the less rolling resistance you're going to have to overcome but also
01:42when you're descending the less jarring it will feel on your hands which can
01:46make a significant difference towards the end of the effort. When it comes to the
01:49route that the road takes down the hill it's good to have one which doesn't have
01:52any particularly nasty bends like 90 degree hair pins or anything particularly
01:57narrow. Those looking for the very fastest times will be looking for a road
02:01which is arrow straight and doesn't require touching the brakes at all on the
02:04way down. So with regards to my hill I wouldn't say it was the perfect one but I
02:07think it's hit each of the criteria well enough and it definitely wasn't a bad
02:10choice to use. The gradient average 10% which by today's standards isn't a
02:14particularly steep hill to Everest on people are going on 15 or 20%. However
02:19talking about the average gradient can hide the true nature of a hill. Mine
02:22wasn't particularly consistent. There are some sections which were quite flat and
02:25other sections which really ramped up but to be honest although that might not
02:29make it the most efficient climb I find that the changes in gradient made it a
02:32lot more enjoyable to ascend time after time. The need to change gear and go in
02:36and out the saddle made it a lot more interesting and engaging than just slogging
02:39for 10 minutes in a single gear straight up and straight down and yeah not having to
02:43think at all. Regarding the road condition that's kind of a story of two halves. On the top part
02:47of the climb the tarmac is completely smooth and couldn't really be better but
02:51down near the bottom there are some fairly large potholes and the surface
02:54itself is just very washboardy and rough. I had 20mm tyres on which did go some
02:59way to smoothing out the surface but by the end I was really feeling it in my
03:04hands. Regarding the traffic it isn't a through road there's a car park at the top
03:07and maybe a farmhouse just along the path a little bit and so you wouldn't expect
03:11there to be too many cars but I found when I cycled down that it was quite a bit
03:15busier than I would like. Fortunately though I had the flexibility to do the attempt on
03:19a Friday and that went a long way to cutting down the number of cars. And so in all I
03:23was pretty 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 Bostor 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
03:37much the challenge dictating the bike but the bike dictating the challenge. I had the
03:422021 Bianchi Sprint on test and when I noticed that the bottom gear was a one-to-one ratio
03:46with a 33 tooth chainring and a 33 tooth sprocket on the cassette but I thought the
03:51opportunity for an everesting was too good to pass up. As this is just a
03:55completely stock setup there are some aspects of the bike which aren't ideal
03:58for an everesting. So starting with the heart of the bike, the frame. It's got a
04:02full 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
04:10on minimising the weight and altogether this bike comes in at just over eight kilos which
04:14isn't exactly feathery but then it's not so heavy that it was going to make or
04:17break the attempt. Coming now to the groupset we've got the SRAM Force Axis 2x12.
04:22I think that hydraulic disc brakes really lend themselves to an everesting attempt. Rim brakes
04:26might be lighter but with the disc brakes the lighter lever action. With the amount of
04:31braking that an everesting requires being able to just pull yourself to a stop with a single finger
04:35is a lot less fatiguing when you're deep into the effort. For me I think the most important thing
04:40when it comes to bike setup for an everesting has got to be the gearing. As steep climbs are so
04:44much more efficient for completing the challenge in as quick a time as possible you need to have
04:48gears that will allow you to turn a reasonable cadence while at a sustainable wattage. And for
04:53me on my hill that meant it was absolutely imperative that I did have at least a one-to-one
04:57bottom gear. And even that was treading a little bit of a tightrope. At the top of the hill
05:01when the gradient ramps up for a final time I was finding that I'd either have to push
05:05a little bit too high of a wattage or grind a little bit more than I'd want to. And so
05:10there's lots of one-tooth jumps between the smaller sprockets but as you move out to the
05:14easier gears the jumps between the gears get a little bit larger. Now ordinarily I think that
05:19this is great. You've got those small jumps when you're in the bigger gears and working
05:23hard and when it comes to the steep climbs. You've got the range and it doesn't really
05:26matter so much about having a bigger jump because at that point you kind of want an easier
05:30gear whatever it is. If I was speccing the bike myself I probably would have gone for
05:35Shimano's GRX groupset and an 11-32 cassette. Not only would that have given me a lower bottom
05:41gear but for the final three sprockets it goes 25-28-32 and those smaller jumps really would
05:47have made I think a pretty big difference. Coming now to the tyres they were the Toria Rubino
05:52model in a size 28mm and I have to say I was very happy with them. They're not as lightweight
05:56or as fast as the Corsa model. They're by no means bad in either department and the extra
06:01robustness they have as a consequence meant that I didn't get any punctures for the entire effort.
06:06I'm also running inner tubes rather than tubeless and I think that if I was to do it again I'd
06:10definitely change to tubeless. Particularly on that hill with the rough section down at the bottom
06:14being able to drop a few psi and have a bit of a smoother ride would have made a very
06:18large difference
06:19towards the end. So coming to my training it wasn't too specific I didn't know that I was going to
06:23be
06:23doing it everything until a couple of weeks before when I happened to have a bike that was well suited
06:27to the challenge. Over Christmas I had completed the Festa 500 and so that put a fair bit of volume
06:32into my legs and through January and February I've been combining Zwift racing with some long
06:36endurance rides and I think that combination of intensity and longer steady efforts had a good
06:40effect on my fitness leading up to it. Climbing hills with a similar gradient to Phil Bostol would
06:45have really helped but pedalling kinematics when you're going up something so steep at an endurance
06:49all day pace were quite different to any of the other riding I was doing and so although I had
06:53the base fitness I found that it was my joints that really started to suffer by the end of the
06:57effort. With the nutrition I was keeping things simple I had just three different fuels I had an
07:02SIS energy powder for my water bottles along with some chocolate mini rolls for that fast release energy
07:07and the final food I had was that staple of a long distance effort the sausage roll. I got most
07:13of my
07:13calories from the powder I found that I couldn't really eat while going up the climb it was just a
07:17bit too
07:18steep and to be honest my appetite for solid food wasn't the greatest but even so I made sure that
07:22every two hours I'd have a quick stop at the top and grab a sausage roll and a mini roll
07:26just to
07:27keep my stomach settled as I find that I can start to suffer from cramps if I'm on the nodeling
07:30liquid
07:31diet. I think that I did get the fueling spot on I couldn't have consumed anymore I was on the
07:35verge of
07:36being too full throughout the whole thing but even then I'd only taken on about 4,300 calories through
07:41the duration of the effort whilst Java reckons that I burnt 8,000 calories. Coming now to the weather another
07:47reason for wanting to get sub 12 hours was because I wanted to minimise the amount of time that I
07:52would be riding at night. Doing the Everest thing at the end of the winter meant that I would have
07:56to do some laps in the dark. With the weather conditions it obviously really helps for it to be
08:00dry on the day. The rain just adds all sorts of complications with coronary traction, braking and
08:05more difficulties with layering and keeping warm and comfortable. Fortunately the weather was stunning
08:09on the day with bright blue skies and the sun shining. As the winter still hadn't quite yet gone I
08:14was
08:14wearing bib shorts with leg warmers and a thick winter jacket when I first set off. The temperature
08:18at the beginning was around about one degree and descending down the hill with the cold air
08:22slamming into you, you can get cold really quite quickly on the way down. But I was expecting the
08:27day to warm up and so I did bring a light away to long sleeve jersey. However what I hadn't
08:31considered
08:31is that this would be the warmest day since the autumn and even a long sleeve jersey proved to be
08:35far
08:35too hot by even as early as 10.30 in the morning. The pacing I think is one of the
08:39most important
08:40parts of being able to complete an Everest thing. It's very tempting to go out far too hard on a
08:44hill
08:44and just end up burning yourself out before you complete the effort. From my recce runs I found
08:49that I could do a full lap so up the hill and back down in about 9 minutes 50 seconds.
08:53This was right
08:54at the top of my zone 2. Although it would be hard work it suggested that the effort was certainly
08:59doable.
09:00In the first six hours I went out perhaps a little bit hard. My lap times were around about 9
09:04minutes 30
09:05which was a bit faster than I really needed. And the average watts I was picking out on the climb
09:09itself
09:09was about 250 which was just nudging into my zone 3 and so a little bit too intense for an
09:15all day effort.
09:16And so perhaps doing more of a negative split rather than a positive split if I had gone out
09:20slightly easier and ramped up for pace at the end I could maybe have gotten a better time. But to
09:25be honest
09:25I'm not convinced it was the wrong decision to go out as hard as I did for the first half
09:29of the effort.
09:30Mentally it really helped feeling like I was ahead of time and I wasn't plagued with anxiety about
09:34mechanicals because I knew I had a bit of buffer to play with. And when the effort did start to
09:38bite at the end of the
09:39rest thing it was quite a relief to know that it was going to be okay if I backed off
09:42the effort a
09:43little bit. When it comes to endurance rides I tend to break things down into thirds. Before the start
09:47I was a little bit worried about how I'd be feeling around about hour nine. I find that transition
09:51between the middle and the final third can really play on your mind with the fatigue setting in but
09:56also the knowledge that you've got to do half as much as you've already done all over again. I find
10:00that in the final sixth things tend to pick up quite a bit. The end is very much in sight
10:04by that point
10:05and it's a lot easier to carry on pushing. However this time during the everesting I didn't get that
10:10crunch point at the two thirds point. It actually came a lot sooner. I was about seven and a half
10:15hours in and it was then that I was really starting to feel the effort. It's surprising how quickly the
10:19change did take place because just a few hours previously I was feeling as fresh as if I'd just
10:23started. At five hours in I felt like I could keep on going all day no problem. So there you
10:28go that was my
10:29first everesting attempt. If you enjoyed this video please be sure to give it a like and subscribe for
10:33more and if you have any questions just drop them in the comment section down below and I'll do my
10:38best to answer them.
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