So as Vizzini said, when a job goes wrong, you go back to the beginning.
Where did this all start? I had done a run challenge in April with my awesome fellow coaches Julie and Laura, and it was amazing. We had done it because we were all missing races due to the season of everything-is-cancelled, but we didn’t realize how badly were were missing them - as both athletes and coaches - until we were in the midst of the run challenge. I need races as an athlete, to create purpose and direction for my training (and, in all reality, for my life) and I need races as a coach, because helping my athletes achieve incredible goals is the Best Thing Ever. So, if there are no races, there are gonna have to be challenges. And they can’t be manageable, I’ve-got-this kind of challenges, because that’s not actually a challenge. Hence: Everesting.
“Everesting” is climbing the elevation of Mt Everest - 29,029 feet - on your bike or on foot, in a single session, by going up and down the same hill over and over and over again. Its simplicity is also the root of its evil. My Everesting attempt was on my bike, in my basement on my trainer, using Zwift (a virtual cycling app). I chose this for a variety of reasons, mostly because I knew there wouldn’t be enough daylight to do it outside.Originally, my goal was something beyond a Half Everest (14,515 feet of climbing). That goal seemed manageable, and manageable goals aren’t exciting, so Base Camp (17,700 feet) or Camp I (19,900 feet) felt more like a reach. Everest itself felt simply unattainable. I trained for the Half, logging about 9400 feet of climb in my final training ride - which was already a lifetime record for elevation gain by several thousand feet - and felt ready. Then Julie texted: “you know you are going to go for the full.” I texted back something obnoxious, and then within five minutes it was “fuck, now I can’t stop thinking about it.” The girl’s a ninja. It was like fucking Inception. Just like that, my goal was Everest.
The two weeks between my 9k+ ride and “race day” were not perfect. I did some final recon on hills, spent a lot of time obsessing about the math of the day (miles, minutes, feet of gain, grades, watts, W/kg, and IF - basically all the numbers), didn’t sleep nearly enough because the sun and the fucking birds wake up very, very early in May, and grew increasingly concerned that my legs were continuing to carry the fatigue of my 9k+ training ride.
So here’s what happened on race day:
For starters, my legs were still not fresh. That always freaks me out. I tried to tell myself that I can bike and race on tired legs, and that it’s more about courage than math - my big mantra for the day - but when you’re staring down an actual entire day and then some on the bike that’s a tough sell. The first two laps (of a 19-lap target, with 1500-odd feet of gain per lap) didn’t feel easy, but they did go by quickly thanks to the Zoom sessions with several other Everesters, also on their trainers. And then, for no explicable reason, lap 3 was awful. LAP 3 OF 19. Fuck this is never going to happen.Thankfully lap 4 was better. And then lap 5 was absolutely horrible. I got off my bike after that one for a kit change and was already practically in tears. All I could think was that I was so absolutely fucked, but I was trying to get out of my own head and not let my brain dictate the day. I was already backing off the Everest goal, and set a new goal of completing one lap more than my legs wanted to climb. Fuck. Already?
For absolutely no reason, lap 6 went quickly. It didn’t feel great, but the time went by without issue. The incredible thing was that at this point, nearly 6 hours into the ride and longer than I’d ever been on my trainer, I had not yet turned on the television. This is how I get through every single trainer ride - 30 minutes, 5 hours, whatever: movies and shows that I record and stockpile are my crutch. And now that I’d hit 10am, I could (a) have the caffeine that I’d been holding out on, and (b) turn on the television without waking my teenagers.Lap 7 started horribly, and then 15 minutes into it the caffeine took hold and Disney’s “Miracle” was all that I remembered and I felt AMAZING. This was going to be ok! I was going to stay on that caffeine wagon and ride it all the way to the top. Lap 8 was fine, not amazing but fine. Lap 9 was DEATH. Lap 10 was no better, and I was desperate. Partway up lap 10 I hit the Half Everest mark and I really, really wanted to stop. The other Everesters on my Zoom had hit their Half mark and had stopped and the Zoom was over. I was all alone, in my basement, I still had literally forever to go to summit Everest, and really what was the point of continuing? What exactly was I gaining by reaching toward some completely arbitrary point between the Half and the summit?
But the one thing I wanted to do, since I clearly wasn’t going to Everest, was to go one lap beyond what I thought was my finish line. So I forced myself to (virtually) head back to the bottom of the hill and turn around to start another lap. It took a lot of willpower to make that happen, but I committed to it and wouldn’t allow myself to entertain the thought of doing anything else.
I did another kit change, grabbed Snickers and a Coke, and spent a few minutes HyperVolt-ing my quads. I started lap 11 close to tears, but mentally insistent that I complete three more laps to hit 20,000 feet of climb. (How I convinced myself to do one more lap and then suddenly was going to do three more to hit 20k I have no idea, but I had locked onto that goal something fierce and so there it was.) I scarfed down some donut holes in lieu of the Snickers and made it to the end of lap 11 - 17,000 feet.Lap 12 was rough. I’d been holding endurance-level watts for each climb, and by now they felt like threshold-level watts. Not bueno. I ate more donut holes, and my husband brought me McDonald’s fries that I said I didn’t want and then shoveled in my mouth like a savage emerging from the wilderness. 12 laps and 18,500 feet down.
Lap 13 I stopped forcing myself to get into Zone 2, and rode at Zone 1 watts. It felt a little better, and I was terrified that it was going to feel ok and that then I’d have to keep going. At about 19,000 feet that all changed. I started screaming out random words into my empty basement - not my usual string of expletives (although there were a few of those too), but some new ones for me: “Dying!” “Vomit!” The final 1,000 feet were absolute torture. I hit 20k, dismounted my bike, and lay down on the floor directly next to my trainer. I couldn’t move any further, couldn’t take off my shoes, couldn’t lift my head. I was done.
Ultimately, I think I did myself a disservice by setting just the one “A” goal and not “A,” “B,” and “C” goals - and I know better. Racing is not all or nothing. It’s taking what the day gives you, and fighting for every inch no matter what that looks like. If I’d started the day thinking that a Half Everest was my C goal, 20k was my B goal, and an Everest summit was my A goal - and that when I wanted to stop, I absolutely had to do one more lap - I would’ve finished the day feeling pretty damn satisfied.
And the funny thing is that writing this race report and overlaying the goals I should’ve had onto the day that I did have actually helps. Which is good, because it means I can stop thinking about a second attempt. For now.