When a friend asked me a while ago if I wanted to do an Everest (ride up and down the same hill over and over until you have a total ascent of 8848m – the height of Mt Everest above sea level) my first thought was “not really”. But then he mentioned that it was for a good cause, and the training benefit that it would bring, and that the date had just shifted so that it didn’t clash with what I consider the best one-day race in the country, and I thought again.
Steve was looking at doing it on Black Mountain – a course that includes 231m of climbing each lap, meaning 38.4 laps. Now it is a beautiful climb with great views over Canberra, and it was one I used to do a lot when I worked right at the foot of it, but even then 8 times in a single day seemed like a reasonable limit – any more than that was sure to get boring. It would definitely make a solid training day though, and given that it would be raising money to help a young guy (Ryan) who had come off his bike and collected some fairly hefty medical bills it seemed worthwhile, so I said I’d do it.
The concept was that Steve and I would each do a solo Everest on Black Mountain, and meanwhile some of Ryan’s classmates would form two teams, with each team completing an Everest, so a total of four Everests.
Steve has been a lot stronger than me on the bike lately so I knew straight away that he’d be lapping faster than me. When he told me that he was planning to run a low gear of 36*30 though I was a bit surprised – that’s a lot higher than the 34*32 I ran for IndyPac, and I was still planning to go to 34*34 for #TCRNo7. But that’s what he had on his race bike. For me, I had a different plan – I looked at taking my super light weight machine and maybe changing the gear ratios to make it more workable, but with TCR rapidly approaching it was obvious that the best choice would be to take the same bike I would use for that – my trusty Fikas. I would upgrade the gearing on it to get me my 34*34, with the trade-off being that built as it is, with a super comfortable titanium frame, deep section wheels and an ultegra groupset it is several kilos heavier than the ligth-weight machine. I decided to minimise everything else I was carrying though, to make up for it. Black Mountain is only about a 20 minute ride from my house, but all the same I packed the car full of food, lights, drink, more lights, warm clothes and some batteries to recharge lights and drove drown there anyway.
Steve arrived before me, and at that time of a May morning in Canberra things are cold, so he sensibly got started straight away. I got unpacked and set up and joined him for the first couple of laps, noting that meanwhile Alex was also out on the mountain, for what we realised was going to be his third Everest since February. It made me feel a lot more sane.
The first few laps in the dark were always going to be pretty bleak affairs but chatting with Steve made it much more pleasant and it was only a couple of laps until dawn arrived and it turned into a spectacular day. It pretty quickly became clear to me though that if I climbed at Steve’s pace I was not going to be able to ride at all the next day, so I sent him on ahead and settled into something more sustainable.
Happily we ended up with people dropping in all day to ride a lap with us, ride a lot of laps with us, or just to clap and cheer and offer food. I was very happy to see Ryan himself come along and though it’s always sad seeing a kid that age needing a walking stick I had to admire his spirit as we talked about Black Mountain and he said “I’ve never even ridden up it once – yet”. And of course it was great to see a lot of people I see all the time, as well as quite a few I haven’t seen for far too long!
Because we were riding at different speeds, stopping at different times and for different durations Steve pretty quickly got a long way ahead of me, and ended up on his last ascent up to where the car was parked while I still had five to go. By that time it was getting dark so I didn’t hang around, pausing only long enough to see him collapse on the ground before heading off to finish my ride.
The last laps were magic – I’ve never been a fan of starting a ride while it is dark in the morning, but I love riding into the night. It was getting cooler and the last other riders headed for home but my number one supporter was still there cheering as I went by.
Pretty early on I had realised that my computer was chewing through batteries so I switched it to battery saving mode. The effect of this was that it turned the screen off so I couldn’t see any time as I climbed, and I figured I would just ride at whatever felt comfortable and sustainable. Looking at the times for each time (below) you can see that it wasn’t actually sustainable at all, they got an awful lot slower towards the end!
Overall though it was great fun, and it was great to see a whole lot of people out supporting this effort to raise funds for a great cause. Riding the same climb 39 times in a row may not sound exciting but it was actually great to watch the day changing from a beautiful dawn through to the perfect morning, a moody afternoon and a crisp and clear evening. I also really appreciated everyone who dropped in to say hi, everyone who rode a lap or two with me, and everyone who brought food and drink!
The ride ended up being 215km, and my Garmin said I climbed 9242m and burned 9102kJ. Elapsed time 15:13:58 (to be fair that included an awful lot of stops) and weighted average power was 222W.
Meanwhile, Ryan’s classmates were going so strong over at Mt Stromlo that they did a combined total of 3.5 Everests.
In terms of racing the next week it didn’t really pay off, I was very quickly and unceremoniously spat out of the back of the bunch on the first climb yesterday and am sitting around feeling sorry for myself today, but I’m sure I will come good at some point!
If you wanted to donate but missed your chance you can still do so by direct deposit to his school (who have been coordinating the fund raising) at:
Bank: Westpac
BSB: 032777 Acc. No.: 001113
Acc. Name: Canberra High School
Code: Ryans Fund
And of course if you want to subscribe to this blog so you can hear all about my journey to and through the Transcontinental Race Number 7 you can do that by clicking the link to the right (or maybe up above, if you’re using a mobile… should be a button that says subscribe somewhere, anyway!).