My Everesting Journey

One of the things that I learned from Dr. Maxwell Trevor is that belief is the most important thing. When I started contemplating Everesting post-lockdown, I was so unsure that I didn’t dare to tell myself that I will attempt it.

So I picked a day when we were going for a walk with my family and explained to them about Everesting and that I want to attempt it. They know well that I am crazy, so they casually asked me to go ahead and do it. They probably didn’t fathom the immenseness of this one, but it was good.

Once I decided, I knew that an effort like this is meaningless as just another individual challenge. So I decided to do this for a good cause and raise awareness and funds. What better cause than helping Dr. Maxwell Trevor Cycling Academy.

When I explained to my colleagues about Everesting, Chitti jumped in and said that he also wanted to ride. I initially thought he was kidding because he hasn’t been training much for the last few years, but I realized he was serious after a few minutes. He had the belief, and that was enough.

All this happened around the middle of August. The next decision was to pick a date. I checked the moon calendar and found that October 2nd early morning was a full moon. It sounded like a good omen – on a Friday, a public holiday, and a full moon. It also gave me sufficient time to train.

Once I decided, I started the preparation. I split the preparation into the following areas: 1) Training 2) Nutrition planning 3) Route Identification 4) Equipment 5) Crew preparation

Training

Climbing is all about watts per kg. So the key aspects were to increase my FTP and lose about 10kg. I managed to lose about 7kg but was happy given the time available.

With immediate effect, I stopped the sweets and chocolates. I am anyways a vegan and eat mostly home food. I ride a few times a week on my trainer and use Sufferfest. So was focused on the threshold and VO2 efforts. Additionally, I made sure I had at least one day per week of 4–8 hrs of riding with about 2000–3000m of elevation gain. I was targeting a weekly elevation of about 5000m.

I wanted to do a ride of 4500m of elevation gain. But that particular day, there was heavy rain in the middle of the workout, and I had to abandon the ride halfway. This was eating me away as I had done a max of 3500m elevation gain in a day. Generally, it is recommended to do at least one ride of 50–60% of the target elevation gain. But I realized that we don’t control everything and lived with this.

The most challenging part of a structured plan is to taper. Any person who has studied coaching principles will say it works. But it is tough to implement; I was very disciplined this time and used the spare time to catch up on much-needed sleep.

I had riding partners – Krishna Kunam, Ankit Reddy, Rajesh, and Chitti join me on my training rides. I was very concerned about tackling boredom – listening to music, fine-tuning a routine for each lap, and the six mental habits from “The Bat” Sufferfest workout were my go-to ways to kill boredom.

Nutrition

Gautham Pothineni is an excellent friend, an ultra runner, and a certified nutritionist. He was kind enough to help me with thorough nutrition planning. We analyzed all the long rides to monitor energy expenditure and see what products work based on how I felt during and after the workout. He suggested Unived’s Elite drink mix, and that worked very well.

I don’t drink enough fluids on the bike. So I also decided to use the Unived Salt capsules to manage electrolyte losses. I have had a history of cramping on big days and tried this during the entire training phase and never cramped.

For recovery, I was using Fast & Up’s plant protein and Unived’s recovery mixes. The energy drink mix was giving 190 cal per serving. We wanted about 250 cal per hour. So the plan was to have one bottle of energy drink per hour with one salt capsule and every 4 hours to have a recovery mix and regular easy-to-digest food.

Gautham wanted me to go off caffeine ten days before the event. We did this to increase caffeine’s impact as a stimulant and ward off sleep during the event. It was tough to do, but I was determined.

The entire nutrition plan worked perfectly and was a key reason for our success.

Route Identification

I shortlisted a few hills and rode them at different times of day to finalize:

• Anantagiri hills near Vikarabad – decided against this as the downhill road was in bad shape, being a ghat section riding in the night can be dangerous with animals, and a lot of tourist traffic.
• Whisper Valley – ideal but for the traffic. Also, there were a lot of dogs at night. I am scared of dogs and do silly things when they even think of coming near me.
• Movie towers – Not enough elevation, and generally I’m not too fond of the climb.
• BNR hills – This is what we chose. It’s a new road, and the only issue was that it was a very gradual climb. But it was our best choice.

Equipment

I rode my Chapter 2 Tere with SRAM Red eTap groupset and Token carbon wheels. The Tere is an all-round racing frame and a great climber. Sampath changed my crank from the massive SRAM Force 53/39 to the Rotor inPower oval 50/34 crank with an integrated power meter.

Sampath’s Merida Reacto 400 would be the spare bike. I would record my activity using Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, and Chitti would do it with a Garmin 520 Edge Plus.

I planned to carry only one water bottle and removed the second bottle cage. A single-bottle cage would also make it easy to drink a bottle every hour.

Chitti rode a Specialized Roubaix with Vittoria carbon wheels. Given my inhibition with riding in the dark, I bought cycling glasses with an interchangeable lens from Tifosi. I also bought a new set of shorts and ensured I rode at least 300km in them before the event.

D Day

The day started with a lot of hype and excitement. Dr. Maxwell Trevor flagged us off. I often start too fast, and it was the same on this day. My heart rate was 10 bpm higher than planned. After sunset, my heart rate came down, and I fell into a good rhythm.

We planned to stop every 14 laps for a less-than-5-min break and every 4 hrs for a more extended food break. The plan worked well.

I was using the Cateye 1100 lumen headlight, which was very powerful and made my ride in the darkness without issues.

The first signs of fatigue started with the dawn. Around noon, I had a chat with the core team. I felt it was becoming challenging to last 14 laps between breaks. I always wanted to go for 10k. But at this point, I figured that I would concentrate on Everesting, get it done and refresh and restart for the 10k target. This was a key moment in the effort. We had about 28 laps to go for Everesting. So we decided to take it as three sets of 10 laps each.

After pulling through for the Everesting distance, I took a shower on the side of the road, changed for the third time, had my lunch, and was ready to roll.

Chitti was riding a bit slower than me. But he understood I had crossed the mark and got a fresh lease of mental strength and started pushing hard. Shortly after I crossed 10k, Chitti finished his Everesting around 5:45 pm, finishing with an all-out effort in his last lap. We had a small get-together to acknowledge everyone’s efforts and called it a day.

Learnings

1. More training rides with pacers and a better pacing plan.
2. Create a well-defined set of things to check and analyze the performance during the breaks.
3. Anyone can run the first 20 miles of a marathon; the good ones have better control of the last 6. This principle applies to every endurance event.
4. Don’t leave anything to chance. I had planned to charge my Wahoo while riding and arranged power banks and ensured it worked. However, I did not check this when fixed to the out-front mount.

At last, we believed, and we did it. I was a chubby kid who wasn’t into sports in my childhood. If I could do it, anyone can. Just start believing.

It’s truly inspiring to see how my efforts have motivated Sampath to achieve a similar feat the following year. Check out his Trenching Journey blog.