Everest on Lake

I completed my first Everest. I climbed 29k ft, with 70 repeats on a single hill. When I started out, a little before 6am, it was dark, cold, and lightly drizzling. The water made the steep descent on rim brakes a little sketchy, and only half the segment had street lights. The rain stopped, and the sun rose, and the road dried, and I could descend faster. The climb was too steep for anything but my lowest gear, and there was no point in switching out of it for the descent, because it was too steep to be worth pedaling.

One nice thing about the cold is that I don't go through my water too fast.

I had Clif Bars and Shot Blocks in my pockets, but not as many as I should have brought. I had eaten all of my food and started to run low on water around 10am, and shortly after that was able to meet up with a friend supporting my ride, to refill on water and food. My first real break for the day. More bars and shot blocks for my pockets, and I chugged a bunch of Gatorade and ate candy bars. 46 mi, 10,400 ft.

The forecast said it was going to rain.

I kept going at a pretty consistent pace for the next few hours. Not too much slower than when I'd started. Each repeat was about 420 ft. Enough of those and I'd eventually get there. Around 17,000 ft it seemed like it got harder. What I think really happened was that I'd been gradually getting slower and had hit some arbitrary power output that I didn't want to go below, because I didn't want to be riding too late into the night. But staying above 160W was hard. I had to take a 5 minute break. Then another one after the next repeat. It would take forever to finish this way.

I got some good advice to eat more. I finished what I had in my pockets - I'd be getting more soon anyway. I had 2 screens I had been watching on my computer - one with speed, power, and cadence, and the other with time, distance, and elevation. I decided to entirely stop watching the first screen. Trying to maintain 160W was clearly not working for me. So I continued on at a slower, but much more sustainable pace. After my ride I noticed that on the cadence and power output charts, you can see exactly where I gave up on 160W.

2nd stop with my support car. More bars, more shot blocks, more water, more candy bars. I requested hot chocolate for the next time. The clouds looked really iffy.

I found a speed I could go at for the rest of the day. However long it took. Not quite as fast as what I was doing before, but I didn't need to take breaks at this speed. Up and down and up and down. Some guy shouted at me, "How many is that?!" and I shouted back, "I don't know, like fifty maybe?!" After the sun set, I found I would get sweaty on the climbs and chilled on the descents.

The clouds went away. It had gotten later than I'd wanted, but I still had time. I had thought I might be able to finish between 8:30 and 9, but that clearly wasn't going to happen. One more stop with the support car. I drank a lot of hot chocolate, and took just a few more shot blocks. I only had a little over 2000 ft left. It was dark and cold, but I was down to single digits of repeats remaining. 5 more and I was at 130 mi, with about 28970 ft. So close. Just one more up and down. Only takes 11 minutes.

I finish just before 10pm. About 15.5 hrs after I started. Not bad.

Some stats:
13:51 moving time
131.8 mi
29,373 ft
6,543 kJ
131W avg

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/2061328745
Everesting Hall of Fame: https://everesting.cc/hall-of-fame/#/hill/2061328745

I ate so many shot blocks. I wish I had brought more shot blocks.