Would I eveRest? - A Lockdown Story

That Intro Bit That Was Much Longer Than I Expected, and Possibly You Don't Even Need to Read, But Maybe You Might Find It Interesting If You're That Way Inclined

So, somewhere a long the line during lockdown I got the idea into my head that I wanted to 'Everest'. The first time I had heard about it was about 2 years ago - the concept was simple: cycle up and down a hill until you have accumulated as much elevation as Mt Everest - 8848m. Doable enough concept until I realised that most of my local hills would require over 100 repeats - to put this into perspective, 10 laps of Freshwater East Hill is probably about one of the worst ways you could think of spending an hour on a bike. To do any more would just be to start counting the many circles of hell.

Local Pembrokeshire Climbs - Everesting Calculations, A Comparison.

Feck.That.Shite.

Fast forward 2 years and somehow my mindset had changed. Lockdown in itself didn't directly spark anything, I had already nailed down a routine of 3 turbo sessions a week, as well as a great nutrition plan that was really working for me. I'd always been a bit stand offish about Zwift, a virtual cycling platform for you un-initiated, whereby the power you put into your bike on the turbo is reflected on screen by an incredibly muscular avatar of yourself cycling on virtual roads. If you were lucky enough to have a smart trainer, the resistance would change on your trainer to reflect the gradient on the screen but I was stuck on my TrainerRoad vibe. I was happy with my little graph to follow and their training programs are really good and I've always seen results when i plan my year with them (I still do). With Zwift, there was power ups. You could cycle in a Volcano. You could descend a hairpin at 85km/h, The gamification didn't really appeal to me.

My happy, sandwich eating real life self

My butch Zwift avatar - Uncanny!

Feck.That.Shite.

Then along came RGT cycling, a similar but different platform to Zwift, that offered all it's premium services for free for the duration of lockdown. WOW. What a noble gesture! If zwift was a game, RGT was a cycling simulator, it had spectacularly constructed virtual courses of real, iconic roads, Stelvio, Cap Formentor, Majorca and Mont Ventoux in France being the stand out ones. As well as this, you could upload a gpx of any route in the world, and they would "virtualify" it with a Magic Road, a floating replication of the road  in a strange Tron-like landscape. With a few of the guys in the club, we got really involved in this, organising virtual group rides every Sunday during the height of lockdown and trouble shooting the various glitches that came with the more up and coming platform. This evolved into us joining something called a 'Witex World tour" which resulted in very interesting races (not always for the right reasons!) on Sundays in Canary Wharf and on the Stelvio. The Facebook community of RGT was great also and got into some really lovely virtual group rides with a regular group of strangers during weekdays. It was the Stelvio race that made me realise that my fitness had come along a long way and combined with a 20kg weight loss I quite enjoyed hammering out an effort on an hour+ climb - something simply not available to me in the real world, locally.

RGT Magic Road - The Floating ribbon of Alpe D'Huez floating away into the distance

It was about here that the promise of RGT stuttered a bit for me. The Witex tour got cancelled just after a good result on the Stelvio, and shortly after, I had the most glitch-ridden ride of can think of up a magic road group ride of the Alpe d'Huez*. There were no other long running events (leagues/tours) on the horizon, the magic roads had lost their charm the tech troubleshooting got too much and I lost almost all enthusiasm for virtual cycling.

Feck.This.Shite....Sort of.

During this apathy for virtual cycling I mainly reverted back to the trusty no-internet-even-required graphs of TrainerRoad, but in the frustrating aftermath of not getting to complete my climb of the Alpe d'Huez, I took up the chance to join my good friend Paul O Brien on a group ride up the Zwift replica of the same climb, the Alpe du Zwift. As I thought it would be the one and only time I'd climb it on Zwift, I wholeheartedly attacked it and smashed it in under 50 minutes**. Even though I had essentially time-trialled it for about an hour I bloody loved it. All the switchbacks kept me really engaged, something about the gamification really worked for me and just made the climb a number of levels to be conquered.

It was during this time that Everesting was trending again in cycling circles. Pent up pro cyclists where going out to their local mountains and smashing the world record almost on a weekly basis, those that couldn't get to a mountain where doing it virtually, vEveresting, which predominantly seemed to be happening on... Alpe du Zwift. Hmmmmm, what is required to that then?, I found myself asking...myself. Only 8.5 climbs, you say? And you can get up and walk around during the 10 minute descents, you say? All of a sudden this seemed very doable!!

My Tacx Flow Cooling Fan

I had asked Paul if it was something he'd like to do with me before we'd even done the Alpe, as we always meet up once a year for some kind of 100 mile event. It was only really an idea, something down the line to aim for in the strange times, but now it was starting to become very doable.

*I would later find out that most of the faults were due to my trusty Tacx Flo Smart Trainer overheating during higher power outputs, and dropping out on power rendering it utterly frustratingly useless for virtual cycling, but of no fault to RGT itself. I later remedied this with a little fan aimed specifically at it.

**I would later find out that my trusty Tacx Flow Smart Trainer was over reporting power at higher outputs, and this time & pace may not have been particularly realistic, by up to 5 minutes. I have however caught up to the FTP that this performance feigned, and am confident I will match this time in a future effort when my legs recover!

The Bit I Feel I Should Write About 'the Preparation' & Stuff, That Actually Turned Out To Be Even Longer Than The Overly Long Intro, But Perhaps Worth Reading To Fully Appreciate the Next Bit .... Or Maybe Not, I Dunno

My whole training program was geared towards TriAthlone 2020 - towards absolutely blasting an Olympic Distance Triathlon out of the water, and getting a high position in the race. When it was clear that TriAthlone wasn't going to happen and I was going to do this Everesting thing, I .... continued with my Olympic training program. I guess it was the first time I truly followed a training program right into the summer. Out of principal I just wanted to see it through and see what the results would be. The program led up the first weekend of July and the proposed initial date for my Everesting event was gonna be mid August, so I figured plenty of time to build up distance after that. However I couldn't help myself and, on top of my 3 x trainer road sessions a week and occasional group ride on RGT (and even a bonus ride on them there real life roads), I started experimenting in multiple Alpe climbs. 2 the first week, then 3 the next and before I knew it, on the weekend I would've been doing TriAthlone, I did an Everest Basecamp, which at just about 5 and a half hours, was the longest I had ever spent on a turbo.

I must have been super fit at the end of that program as the very next day I hammered myself in the first stage of the virtual L'Etape du Tour***, then midweek i claimed a KOM on one of my favourite local climbs, beating my previous best, set only a month before by 50 seconds. This was followed by another double whammy weekend of a Virtual Pembrokeshire Coast Triathlon and Stage 2 of L'Etape and aggressive Stage 3 on Mont Ventoux the week after. Looking back on it, i probably should've continued my basecamp effort right into an Everesting - I had so much energy to burn at that time. I did all of the L'Etape stages with Paul - it was the great thing about virtual cycling, that over lockdown we could still get the social aspect of doing these events together, and ironically were cycling more together than we ever had previously.

*** It was after the L'Etape du Tour 1st Stage that I got suspicions that my Tacx Flo Smart Trainer was perhaps a bit more inaccurate than I could be happy with. I did some tests on it measuring it against my Stages Crank in the same activity and found it was underreporting power up to 225 watts, and over reporting power over that. This was a relief to find that my Basecamp Everest was on the right side of anomaly, and so that was accurate, if not slower than it should have been. However, it did mean that my more "spectacular" performances were only "really good" - which was pretty disheartening and had me questioning what progress I had actually made from my training up to that point. From after Stage 1 onwards, I used the Stages Crank for power reading and the Tacx Flo for replicating terrain only.***

Power Test: Tacx Flow (Purple) vs Stages Crank (Blue)

July bled into August and just did whatever events cropped up, like the Norseman Festival of Climbing virtual event, and a double stint in the local Milford Triton TTs, in total nearly taking 2 minutes off my previous best set in 2016 when i was the fittest i had previously ever been on the bike.. It was really great to see some real world results after all the virtual shenanigans - it was nice to confirm the big gains were real, after the Tacx Flo inaccuracies were making me question where i actually was.. I entertained the idea of doing an 'In Real Life' (IRL) Everesting as the weather was becoming too nice to take on the prospect of 12+ hours on the turbo in the conservatory. Ultimately there was no longer any focus and I postponed the idea of a vEveresting until 'October/November'.

Tiers Cross TT - A Confidence Boosting Real World Performance

In August I also got something I had been after a long time, a drive train smart trainer. The main appeal was the silence, so i could train whenever I wanted in the conservatory without the noise being an issue, but it was also far more accurate than the Tacx Flo, could replicate a steeper slope and was actually required by Hells500 for an Everesting attempt to be officially recognised. It was a Wahoo Kickr Core which I got from Cycle Works in Pembroke. However, he gave me such a good deal, I couldn't refuse on getting the Kickr Climb too, a device that literally pushes your bike up and down to replicate the slopes you are climbing in the virtual world. I tried the new set up almost immediately, cycling the virtual Prudential Ride London (100 miles) with Paul. The new set up was so immersive, I couldn't believe it was the longest i had spent on a turbo at just under 7 hours!

Finishing the Virtual Prudential Ride London with Paul

I still had no structure to what I was doing. I still technically had swimming events that were going ahead in September and i was trying to get some fitness together for that. I had tried setting up a training program the keep the cycling up but kept getting distracted, or just plainly was enjoying being outside on a bike and being fit for the first time in a few years. I went back to Ireland for a much needed break for two weeks, but ultimately my idea of a break was cycling 700km in 2 weeks! There was a segment from my village to the next town that I always tried to beat when i was home the last couple of years. I gave it a go this time and I smashed it, taking it by 4 minutes (5 minutes faster than my previous attempt at Christmas). It was a real buzz to experience this massive jump in fitness over 9 months but equally it was so frustrating that the one year I got this all right, every event in the world had been cancelled!! It's like I needed a tangible event to let loose on, so I could finally.just.rest.

I came back from Ireland looking for a bit more structure again. I started back on my Trainer Road sessions but this time I had manually rebuilt them so i could do them in zwift - best of both worlds! I set a date with Paul for the 24th of October to mobilise us to get ready for this Everesting, we started doing group rides on Saturdays doing multiple climbs of the Alpe again. But my habits of throwing myself into everything from the last two months didn't go away. An outgoing lodger tested positive for Covid 19 and my household (though infected lodger didn't live their anymore) went into 14 days self isolation. I ended up doing 14 days in a row on zwift, twice a day on quite a few days, including doing a full on 40km virtual race the Tuesday before doing another Basecamp Everest on the Saturday. To make it something more than my last attempt I continued to an elevation of 5000m to complete 5 ascents (about 500 extra metres over basecamp).

This was not to say that I was fitter than my previous basecamp attempt. Not at all. No flitting out and smashing a virtual race the next day, no  going out on a whim and snatching a KOM during the week. I barely finished my training sessions that week, did Ven top x 2 the following Saturday but only barely, then crashed out of my sessions the the week after. My legs were absolutely done for. Burnt out. I was only a week away from a tapering fortnight for the Everesting attempt  but I had to start early - I had nothing left to give to anything. Weekend rides were cancelled in favour of birthday shenanigans.

 I only did (and could only do) really easy spins now and hoped to god my legs would recover in time so I could cycle twice as much on a turbo as I had ever done before.

The Last Week of What No Longer Felt Like Preparations

The final week was a bit surreal. I kind of went through the motions, did some gentle spins, saw Vicky for a pre-event massage. The legs just didn't feel good. Even the light spins, the the movement of pedaling felt unnatural. The prospect of Saturday didn't feel real. Nevertheless, I made my preparations. I made a probable timetable of my ascent times and shared them with my Zwift chat group in the hope that people would join me on different climbs. I made a group event on zwift and invited everyone that followed me in the hope of the same. I also told Jon in the office, an avid zwifter and anyone else I could. I really had no idea if anyone would join at all.

My approximated timetable for my attempt, made to help people plan around joining me on the day

Paul was having a rough time in the lead up, and it didn't really feel on that he would do it. I knew he was the sort of person who would feel like he was letting me down if he couldn't do it, but he had bigger things on his plate. Life things. I had a chat with him during the week about maybe him doing a basecamp while I did the full, and i think that eased the pressure of expectancy on him. As it panned out he let me know on Friday he wouldn't be able to do it at all. We would've been going different paces, but I was sad that he wouldn't be on the course on the day, and was gutted for him, as I know he would have really wanted to give it a go and just be part of it.

I had my massive bowl of spaghetti Bolognese that evening & prepared everything for the event that night. A bowl full of energy bombs (a special recipe of peanut butter, oats, banana, raisins and apricot jam). Two whole bags of haribo. An 8 pack of Tunnocks Chocolate Wafer Bars, Another pack of yoghurt biscuit things. A bowl of fruit. 8 litres of energy drink. It was all a bit.... much. I was under no illusion that I was going to consume all of this, but I felt I needed the choice and the variety, and better to have too much than too little!

I lay out 8 changes of kit in the spare room. I was hoping to change kit every two laps, but made allowances for every one, just in case. I located all my cycling gloves and sweat bands into one place. I put clip on aero bars on the bike for more position options, particularly to take the pressure off my hands. I removed and waxed my.... chain. I moved a telly and hifi and apple tv into the conservatory and no end of extension cables. I put a crossbar bag on the bike for all the controls for the the electronic shit. I hung up a birthday gift from Flo, by cable tie above my laptop and tv the famous words of Greg LeMond "It never gets easier, you just get faster"

My set-up, ready for the next day of climbing

I went to bed with nothing left to do but get up and get over a mountain.