PEAK CYCLING

While lockdown has restricted us this summer, the Everesting craze has boomed...

Barring box-set bingeing, Zoom quizzes and strolls in the grassiest area closest to home, the solo bike ride has been the lockdown ratings hit. Taken to its apex for the solo rider is the Everesting phenomenon, which has enjoyed a golden summer, eight years after its creator, the Australian Andy van Bergen, invented the concept. In his own words, Everesting is “fiendishly simple. Pick any hill, anywhere in the world, and complete repeats of it in a single activity until you climb 8848m – the equivalent height of Mount Everest.”

Rarely creatures who require a second invitation to be socially distant from one another, cyclists have hot-footed it to their favourite local hill this summer, armed with only their own company, a bike and the sustenance to see them through a torrid day.

To date, there have been around 10,000 successful attempts across 96 countries and 87 million metres have been climbed. If only there was an unsuccessful tally that I could count myself in. Back in 2014, I attempted to ‘Everest’ Surrey’s Box Hill, a doomed, all-day-and-all-night affair that ended, shortly after sunset with 120 miles and over half the climbing completed, through both a loss of power in the bike light and loss of morale in my tortured soul. As something of an early adopter – and an early giver-upper when it comes to this sport – I’ve yet to feel the urge to try again.

In the years since, Everesting has steadily become established as something of a gold standard in endurance cycling. But 2020 has seen a palpable shift in its essence: from something people did to complete, either for charity or to tick off their bucket list, to a competition to set the fastest time. Like the running marathon, it remains something the vast majority of cyclists do as a personal challenge but, like the marathon, there’s a separate elite race being waged up the road.

Much of this is down to the big names who have joined the party this summer. The zenith was reached in July when no less than El Pistolero himself, Alberto Contador, seven-time Grand Tour winner, set the new men’s record, riding for 7 hours, 27 minutes and 136km on the small, but savagely steep 12.9 per cent ‘Silla del Rey’ climb in the mountains north west of Madrid. His time eclipsed, by two minutes, the previous record, set just a couple of weeks earlier by current WorldTour pro Lachlan Morton. Also in July, former pro Emma Pooley became the first woman to go below the nine-hour mark, riding the 13 per cent Haggenegg climb in Switzerland in 8 hours, 53 minutes.

As the quest for speed has become a priority, the shorter - and steeper - the top rides have turned into. Nobody is going to pick a Box Hill, where upwards of 350km are needed to Everest its 5 per cent slopes. Clearly there’s a physiological cost to taming a 13 per cent climb 78 times over like Contador did, but the best way to the record is to ride as few kilometres as possible while still descending - the dead zone of an Everesting attempt, where your metres climbed tally is suspended - as quickly and as safely as possible.

That’s a lesson the current leading man, former pro Ronan McLaughlin, learned during his astonishing 123km ride on the 14.2 per cent Mamore Gap in County Donegal in late July, chipping 23 minutes off Contador’s record - more than an hour faster than his first attempt several weeks earlier. It was achieved with a sharp climb, yes, but also on a radically tailored lightweight bike, which involved retuning his electronic groupset to three gears, riding without bottle cages and carving up his handlebars for a bike more at home in hill-climbing season than a ride that requires so much focused descending. Beating it will require one hell of a ride, but with so much falling off the previous record, it indicates there’s still some way to go.

“Everesting has steadily become established as something of a gold standard in endurance cycling”