Everesting: Under the Freeway Climb in Reno, NV

Strava File: Everesting: Under the Freeway Climb in Reno, NV

This is my 4th successful Everesting. Here are links to the other 3: Geiger Grade, Monitor Pass, and 844.

The Climb

This Everesting took place on the Under the Freeway Climb segment south of Reno, NV, a segment that I ride quite often. Before today I had done it 15 times so far in 2016. It's a simple little segment-- 0.1 miles of straight road at 8%. It would take 455 repeats to Everest this segment. I decided to go for 460 just to be safe.

Why did I choose this segment? To be honest, this Everesting attempt was a last minute idea and I chose the segment more out of convenience and familiarity than anything else. If you look at my past Everests you will notice that a short climb with a high number of repeats is missing from my resume, so I knew that I wanted to fill that hole.

This particular segment is close to home and it has a wide shoulder, low traffic, and a good spot right at the top to park the car. The only thing it's missing is good scenery, but that seemed like a lower priority on a high-repeat ride like this.

The Ride

I started off around 5:20 AM in the dark. The moon was almost full and was putting out a lot of light, so it didn't really seem like the dark. Things started off fairly well. I made it through the first 100 laps and I felt surprisingly fresh. My speed was still decent and my legs didn't hurt at all. Mentally, I was doing a good job of focusing on the near term and not thinking too much about the big 460 number. I was trying a trick where I would do 9 reps at a normal pace and then take the 10th rep easy. This gave me something to look forward to and my feeble little mind was more focused on that immediate reward than anything else.

Sunrise

Somewhere around lap 115 I started to feel myself getting slower. It wasn't much at first, but then all of the sudden each rep was taking longer and my mind had more time to drift off into the future. Easy reps didn't feel as easy and they were less of a reward. Nevertheless, 200 was a big number and I did a fairly decent job of only focusing on 200 and not 460.

I kept getting slower and it was just a mental and physical grind. There were times when I could focus on the climbs one at a time and not think about anything else. I guess it was like meditation while riding. My mind would be in the moment and I would focus on when to sit, when to stand, when to shift gears, and how to take the turnaround point at the highest speed possible. Then I could do it all over again with the same focus, just trying to shave 1 second off of my time. But there were other times when 321 felt like no progress at all versus 320 because I still had well over 100 reps to go. Then I would look at my total elevation number for the day and there was still so much more climbing to do.

I found it much easier to stay in the moment when I was doing longer climbs. There is more variety in the terrain, which sometimes demands your attention whether you like it or not. Each single climb in itself feels like an accomplishment and brings you closer to the end goal. You can tell yourself, "Just 4 to go" and even though that may be 8,000 feet, it seems like a lot less than saying, "125 to go."

Somewhere around lap 350 my stomach started bothering me. I didn't feel like eating very much. I'm not sure if I ate something bad or if my mind was trying to convince my body to do something to give me an excuse to quit. Either way, the food in my belly forced its way out. I'll let your imagination decide which end it forced its way through. Anyway, that stopped me from eating for a while, which added more problems. I started getting tired and grumpy. I really wanted to quit.

This is where Everestings are made. I've learned my lesson from the previous 3. When you feel like you want to quit, force yourself to do one more rep. You just might ride yourself back into the groove. That's exactly what happened today. Since the laps were short I told myself to just ride 5 more and go from there. I got a second wind and I went from lap 380 up to 410 on that burst of energy. All of the sudden I was within reach and confident that I would finish. My appetite returned and I was back to eating normally. My stomach still felt a little off (and still does one day later), but the timing seemed awfully strange to me. How much of that was mental?

I've had it on every Everesting attempt. There's a moment towards the end when all you want to do is quit, but somehow you push through that and finish. That's what I love about Everesting. You get the opportunity to push past what you think is possible. That's why I've done 4 of them instead of quitting after one like any sane person would. Then again, would a sane person do one in the first place?

Gear, Food Etc.

There really aren't any secrets when it comes to equipment. The best advice is to get the biggest cassette you can find and/or the smallest crank you can find. My easiest gear was a 34-32 and there were times when I would have liked something easier. On a normal ride I would never touch the 32 on this climb, but this isn't a normal ride, is it? I wouldn't want to try a climb over 10% with just a 34-32.

How did I keep track of the climbs? My Garmin (Edge 510) has a lap counter, but I wasn't sure it would go up to 460. Instead, I relied on an old-school tally counter.

High and low-tech counting devices

It worked great. The hardest part was figuring out how to mount it to the bike. I just duct taped it to an ankle strap, which I kept strapped around my arm.


Here's my calorie total for the ride:

Item	Servings	Calories/Serving	Total Calories
Applesauce Packs	2	80	160
Clif Bars (PB)	2	260	520
Clif Bars (Granola)	1	160	160
Fig Bars	3	110	330
Coconut Bar	1	210	210
Tortilla Chips	4	140	560
Veggie Chips	5	150	750
Pepper Triscuits	5	120	600
Sprite	8	20	160
Other Drinks	9	194	1746
		Grand Total	5196

That's about 305 calories per hour. Normally on my weekly centuries I'll shoot for 200 per hour, so this seems about right. There was a time when I didn't feel good and wasn't eating a lot, but it looks like I still managed to get a lot of liquid calories in.

Here's a chart of my climb times (in seconds) over the course of the day. On that big outlier towards the end I dropped something and stopped to pick it up.

Climb time (in seconds) per lap

Thank You

Big thanks to everyone at everesting.cc for the inspiration.