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
00:03towards 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 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
00:48really 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 endurance
01:24effort but ultimately it is a climbing challenge so if you can maximise the
01:27metres gained and minimise the kilometres travelled you're going to end up with a
01:31faster time. With the road condition this can be split into two different areas. One
01:35is the actual surface of the road and the other is the bends and so obviously the
01:39smoother the road is the less rolling resistance you're going to have to
01:41overcome but also when you're descending the less jarring it will feel on your
01:45hands which can make a significant difference towards the end of the effort.
01:48When it comes to the route that the road takes down the hill it's good to have one
01:52which 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
02:13today's standards isn't a particularly steep hill to Everest on people are going on
02:1715 or 20%. However talking about the average gradient can hide the true nature
02:21of a hill. Mine wasn't particularly consistent there are some sections which
02:24were quite flat and other sections which really ramped up but to be honest
02:28although that might not make it the most efficient climb I find that the changes
02:31in gradient made it a lot more enjoyable to ascend time after time. The need to
02:35change gear and go in and out the saddle made it a lot more interesting and
02:38engaging than just slogging for 10 minutes in a single gear straight up and
02:41straight down and yeah not having to think at all. Regarding the road condition
02:45that's kind of a story of two halves. On the top part of the climb the tarmac is
02:49completely smooth and couldn't really be better but down near the bottom there are
02:52some fairly large potholes and the surface itself is just very washboardy
02:56and rough. I had 20mm tyres on which did go some way to smoothing out the
03:01surface but by the end I was really feeling it in my hands. Regarding the
03:05traffic it isn't a through road there's a car park at the top and maybe a
03:08farmhouse just along the path a little bit and so you wouldn't expect there to be
03:12too many cars but I found when I cycled down that it was quite a bit busier than I
03:15would like. Fortunately though I had the flexibility to do the attempt on a
03:19Friday and that went a long way to cutting down the number of cars and so in
03:23all I was pretty happy with the climb. The gradient and the road surface won't do
03:26bad and nor was the traffic but although I do have local hills that are best for
03:30each one of these criteria I think Phil Boster was the best for all of them
03:33overall. So a little bit about the bike well the first thing to point out is it
03:37wasn't so much the challenge dictating the bike but the bike dictating the
03:40challenge. I had the 2021 Bianchi Sprint on test and when I noticed that the
03:44bottom gear was a one-to-one ratio with a 33 tooth chainring and a 33 tooth
03:49sprocket on the cassette but I thought the opportunity for an everesting was too
03:52good to pass up. As this is just a completely stock setup there are some
03:56aspects of the bike which aren't ideal for an everesting so starting with the
04:00heart of the bike the frame it's got a full carbon construction the frame and the
04:04fork but as the name sprint might suggest there's a lot more of a focus on
04:07aerodynamics and power transfer than there is on minimizing the weight and
04:11altogether this bike comes in at just over eight kilos which isn't exactly
04:14feathery but then it's not so heavy that it was going to make or break the
04:17attempt. Coming now to the groupset we've got the SRAM Force Axis 2x12. I think that
04:22hydraulic 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
04:31amount of braking that an everesting requires being able to just pull yourself to a
04:34stop with a single finger there's a lot less fatiguing when you're deep into the
04:37effort. For me I think the most important thing when it comes to bike setup for an
04:41everesting has got to be the gearing. As steep climbs are so much more efficient
04:45for 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
04:52wattage and for me on my hill that meant it was absolutely imperative that I did
04:56have at least a one-to-one bottom gear and even that was treading a little bit of a
05:00tightrope. At the top of the hill when the grading ramps up for a final time I was
05:04finding that I'd either have to push a little bit too high of a wattage or
05:07grind a little bit more than I'd want to. And so there's lots of one-tooth jumps
05:11between the smaller sprockets but as you move out to the easier gears the jumps
05:15between the gears get a little bit larger. Now ordinarily I think that this is
05:19great 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
05:26doesn't really matter so much about having a bigger jump because at that point you
05:29kind of want an easier gear whatever it is. If I was speccing the bike myself I
05:34probably would have gone for Shimano's GRX groupset and an 11 to 32 cassette. Not
05:39only would that have given me a lower bottom gear but for the final three
05:42sprockets it goes 25, 28, 32 and those smaller jumps really would have made I
05:48think a pretty big difference. Coming down to the tires they were Vittoria's Rubino
05:52model in a size 28 millimeters and I have to say I was very happy with them they're not
05:56as lightweight or as fast as the Corsa model they're by no means bad in either
06:00department and the extra robustness they have as a consequence meant that I didn't
06:04get any punctures for the entire effort. I'm also running inner tubes rather than
06:08tubeless and I think that for us to do it again I'd definitely change to tubeless.
06:11Particularly on that hill with a rough section down at the bottom being able
06:15to drop a few psi and have a bit of a smoother ride would have made a very large
06:18difference towards the end. So coming to my training it wasn't too specific I didn't know
06:22that I was going to be doing an Everesting until a couple of weeks before when I
06:25happened to have a bike that was well suited to the challenge. Over Christmas
06:29I had completed the Festa 500 and so that put a fair bit of volume into my legs
06:32and through January and February I've been combining Zwift racing with some
06:36long endurance rides and I think that combination of intensity and longer
06:39steady efforts had a good effect to my fitness leading up to it. Climbing hills of a
06:43similar gradient to Phil Bostol would have really helped but pedaling
06:46kinematics when you're going up something so steep at an endurance all-day pace
06:49are 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
06:57the end of the effort. With the nutrition I was keeping things simple I had just
07:01three different fuels I had an SIS energy powder for my water bottles along with
07:05some chocolate mini rolls for that fast release energy and the final food I had
07:09was that staple of a long-distance effort the sausage roll. I got most of my
07:13calories from the powder I found that I couldn't really eat while going up the
07:16climb it was just a bit too steep and to be honest my appetite for
07:19solid food wasn't the greatest but even so I made sure that every two hours I'd
07:23have a quick stop at the top and grab a sausage roll and a mini roll just to
07:27keep my stomach settled as I find that I can start to suffer from cramps if I'm
07:30on the nodeling liquid diet. I think that I did get the fueling spot-on I
07:34couldn't have consumed anymore I was on the verge of being too full throughout the
07:37whole thing but even then I'd only taken on about 4,300 calories through the
07:42duration of the effort while Strava reckons I burned 8,000 calories. Coming
07:46down to the weather another reason for wanting to get sub-12 hours was because I
07:50wanted to minimize the amount of time that I would be riding at night. Doing the
07:53Everest thing at the end of the winter meant that I would have to do some laps
07:57in 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
08:04traction, braking, and more difficulties with layering and keeping warm and
08:07comfortable. Fortunately the weather was stunning on the day with bright blue skies
08:11and the sun shining. As the winter still hadn't quite yet gone I was wearing bib shorts
08:15of leg warmers and a thick winter jacket when I first set off. The temperature at
08:18the beginning was around about 1 degree and descending down the hill with a cold
08:21air slamming into you, you can get cold really quite quickly on the way down. But
08:26I was expecting the day to warm up and so I did bring a light away to long sleeve
08:29Jersey. However what I hadn't considered is that this would be the warmest day
08:33since the autumn and even a long sleeve Jersey proved to be far too hot by even as
08:36early as 10.30 in the morning. The pacing I think is one of the most important
08:40parts of being able to complete an Everest thing. It's very tempting to go out far too hard on a hill and
08:44just end up burning yourself out before you complete the effort. From my recce runs
08:48I found that I could do a full lap so up a hill and back down in about 9 minutes 50
08:53seconds. This was right at the top of my zone 2 although it would be hard work it
08:57suggested that the effort was certainly doable. In the first six hours I went out
09:01perhaps a little bit hard. My lap times were around about 9 minutes 30 which was a
09:05bit faster than I really needed and the average watts I was picking out on the climb
09:09itself was about 250 which was just nudging into my zone 3 and so a little bit too
09:14intense for an all-day effort. And so perhaps doing more of a negative split
09:18rather than a positive split if I had gone out slightly easier and ramped up
09:22the pace at the end I could maybe have gotten a better time but to be honest
09:25I'm not convinced it was the wrong decision to go out as hard as I did for
09:29the first half of the effort. Mentally it really helped feeling like I was ahead of
09:32time and I wasn't plagued with anxiety about mechanicals because I knew I had a
09:35bit of buffer to play with and when the effort did start to bite at the end of the
09:39Everest thing it was quite a relief to know that it was going to be okay if I
09:42backed off the effort a little bit. When it comes to endurance rides I tend to
09:45break things down into thirds. Before the start I was a little bit worried about
09:48how I'd be feeling around about hour 9. I find that transition between the middle
09:52and the final third can really play on your mind with the fatigue setting in
09:55but also the knowledge that you've got to do half as much as you've already done
09:58all over again. I find that in the final sixth things tend to pick up quite a
10:03bit the end is very much in sight by that point and it's a lot easier to carry on
10:07pushing. However this time during the Everest thing I didn't get that crunch
10:10point at the two thirds point. It actually came a lot sooner! I was about
10:14seven and a half hours in and it was then that I was really starting to feel
10:17the effort. It was surprising how quickly the change did take place because just a
10:21few hours previously I was feeling as fresh as if I had just started. At five
10:24hours in I felt like I could keep on going all day no problem. So there you go
10:29that was my first everesting attempt. If you enjoyed this video please be sure to
10:32give it a like and subscribe for more and if you have any questions just drop them in the
10:36comment section down below and I'll do my best to answer them.