15 hours and 10,500 meters of climbing on Zwift

Tony Soprano with a bunch of ducks probably isn’t the content you were expecting on TBD dot BIKE. But 2020 hasn’t been the year that anyone was expecting, so here we are: Tony Soprano and his ducks.

Why are we featuring Tony Soprano on a training entry on the Journal? Because a few weeks ago I decided to tackle one of the silliest tasks possible on a bike. And unlike Corey’s incredible ride, for some reason I did my ride entirely indoors. Yep, I decided to vEverest:

Perhaps the best place to start is with some stats, because some of the numbers involved are a bit ridiculous to see on paper:

• Elapsed duration: 15 hours, 17 minutes

• Elevation: 10,426 meters (yes, I wanted to break the 10,000 meter mark)

• Distance: 252.7 kilometers

• Work: 10,231 kJ and a TSS of 750

It frankly all seems pretty absurd in hindsight. But it is probably made even more absurd by the fact that it all happened with essentially zero preparation. In fact, while I thought up the idea a few days in advance I didn’t actually decide to vEverest until late the night before after going out and having a few beverages with Lisa (who somehow remains supportive of my many bad ideas, despite at times getting caught out by my lack of planning). So my preparation boiled down to: (1) storing some leftover pasta from Friday night dinner for mid-Everesting snacks and (2) setting an alarm for 6:00AM so that I had some hope of finishing my Everest before it got too late on Saturday.

In the end, the one truly important decision that I made for this effort happened at 6:50AM when I jumped on the bike and started scrolling through Apple TV for entertainment and stumbled upon the Sopranos. As one of the odd ducks who has never watched the Sopranos this was the perfect time to spend more than a dozen largely uninterrupted hours getting to know Tony Soprano. Hence, Tony and his ducks from Season 1 as the header image for this journal entry.

With entertainment selected I quickly settled into a steady routine: climbing up the Alpe, taking a break on the descent to stretch, and then back up for another repeat. I wouldn’t suggest that the hours flew by - 15 hours is a long time to do anything let alone riding a stationary bike. But as the day progressed I honestly didn’t have many challenges with mental or physical fatigue.

A short 12.5 hours later I reached the official Everesting mark. But at that points I was still feeling good so I decided that I might as well go for the 10,000 meter mark, just for shits and giggles.

It wasn’t until I approached the 10,000 meter mark on my 10th trip up the Alpe that I really started to feel the fatigue of 14+ hours on the bike. Of course, it didn’t help that I got over confident at the end, switched from the slow burn of the Sopranos to some EDM music, and promptly decided to attempt my last ascent at threshold wattage. My body very quickly said “no, absolutely not” as my legs started cramping for the first time all day - horribly so.

It was touch and go, and would prove to be my slowest ascent of the day, but I rode through the cramps and right around hour 15 of riding I reached the summit one last time. It was about 10:00PM at night and I had been on the bike pretty much continuously since before 7AM. I was tired and ready for a beer. My body was so out of whack from the experience that I barely slept that night (taking one final caffeine gel at 8PM for the last push probably didn’t help).

In the end was I glad that I had done it? Sure… it was an interesting challenge, both mentally and physically. And as I wrote about with #EveryZwiftRouteTBD I do very much love the process of checking off Zwift badges.

But would I do it again? Almost certainly not… in fact after vEveresting I closed Zwift and didn’t even think about reopening for the better part of two weeks. A few weeks later I’m now back on Zwift and in a training routine, but I don’t think I’ll be attempting another 15 hour indoor ride any time soon. I’m more than happy to stick to Zwift centuries from now on.

Everesting (and vEveresting) tips

There are plenty of vEveresting guides floating around the interwebs so I won’t rehash my strategy in too much detail, but a few tips:

1. Pace for success (and survival): my only chance for vEveresting was to set a slow but steady pace and stick to it. In fact, I mostly rode to heart rate and simply backed off the power anytime I started pushing 140+ bpm. Given just how fatigued I was on my 10th ascent of the Alpe I am quite certain that if I paced any more aggressively I wouldn’t have cracked the 10,000 meter mark.

2. Don’t ignore entertainment: as mentioned, Tony Soprano kept me company for the first fourteen hours of this effort. Somehow that was sufficient to keep mental fatigue to a minimum, at least until the final hour where the wheels started coming off a bit.

3. Nutrition and hydration: this is stating the obvious, but if you’re going to spend this long on a bicycle then getting nutrition and hydration right is essential. I have done a few eight to ten hour days on the bike so I had a sense for how to approach this, and if anything being indoors made this easier. I would do 2-3 bottles every ~80 minutes, usually with hydration mix in 1-2 of them. I also topped off with maurten gels - mix of caffeine and non - approximately every two hours, and squeezed in some ‘real’ food like PBJ sandwiches or penne vodka every four or five hours.

4. Rest and stretch: lastly I made sure to take advantage of every descent to block out some time to bring my heart rate down and stretch. By the end of the ride I was having body aches in places I hadn’t experienced on the bike in years - my feet in particular were struggling - so doing this maintenance work throughout the ride was vital to finish.