If you don’t try you won’t know what are you capable of. 10th September 2016!

Last Saturday 8 brave people went to Anji to fight with their fears and limits. The plan was to do Everesting which is one of the hardest cycling challenges you can think of. Climbing 8848m in one go is hard indeed! If you finish this you become a legend and if you haven’t seen we already have two SCO legends -> https://www.shanghaicycling.org/daming/

We chose Anji as our battle ground. We went there on Friday to have enough time for last preparations, bikes checked, provisions checked, minds checked. All was ok. We woke up at 5AM and Anji welcomed us with superwet roads… Breakfast, 2h of waiting but roads became dry enough to start that crazy challenge around 8AM.

First we had to do a small ride downhill as our hotel was at the top and it was freaking cold! 15km of fast descent made it even colder… After arriving to the start point everybody checked last time all the stuff and boom we go. First 3-4km of the road are made of concrete, later it becomes nice asphalt. Going up was fine, no traffic, we took our paces so the group spreaded all over the climb. I arrived first to the top, put my time on the big board and went down again. All people were already close to the top so passing by them was a nice feeling. Going down was a recovery time and zero gain of elevation. Easy pace doing 45-50kph. Second round up. Being consistent and steady was my goal. Again same pace, keeping HR around 160bpm which for me is a good indicator at what power I am (and I had no power meter so had to base on HR and feel). Going up was fun because as a Shanghai rider the only climbs I do are bridges in Pudong lol. Second time at the top, again putting time on the board and see ya. Descent was faster, I knew where I can push bit harder (keeping HR as low as possible) and where I need to be careful. We had some contacts with riders in Anji and they came to cheer us up. One of those riders was Xu Gang, pro from Lampre Merida. Awesome! Seeing him on the same climb (and descent which he smashed like a boss) was amazing.

Third time to the top and it was lunch time. I ate chicken soup with rice and some meat, did a short break and had to continue. Rest arrived when I was already on the way down so next time I saw them was already on my fourth climb. But it was good seeing that people know this climb is not a joke so you can’t push superhard coz you will bonk instantly.

Fourth climb was fun, smashing some nice speeds, going down like Froome in tuck position till I hit a small hole and my bike bounced back, my balls hit the frame and my lower back hit the saddle. Perfect combo to make your day much nicer lol. Damn I still feel it…

Fifth and sixth climb was very similar with only change during 6th climb that a massive neck pain came to kick my ass… Had to take a long break, which didn’t help much for the pain, Ken arrived, we waited a bit longer, went down, then Ken did some chiropractor magic which was quite nice but pain came back in the mid of the climb and it was a mess. Was struggling, but pushed to the top where I had to put my lights on coz it was already getting super dark. After installing lights I went down almost crying due to amount of pain but descending in pitch black conditions using memory and helping bit with light was actually quite mystical. Pity I was only able to look at my wheel most of the time so had to make sure I arrive to the bottom in one piece. Short break there and went for my 8th attempt up. It was awful. Zigzagging almost all the way as I was not able to hold my handlebar properly, my left side was off. Pace dropped, so it took me same amount of time to go up as for going up and down during previous laps. But after 5 years I arrived to the top… And that was it. Had to stop. Health and safety first and I still have my 366 days in a row in the saddle goal going on. You need to know when to pull the plug out and that was the time for me to do it. Only thing that kept me going up was my request to make me bread with Nutella. That was the best thing I’ve eaten ever!

  

The evening was great. We had a special guest – Xu Gang, pro rider from Lampre Merida team. He shared some stories from proworld also his plans for near future and it looks awesome!  For sure you will hear about him soon. Then we drank Polish vodka and we were partying hard to celebrate what we achieved (actually we had to drink to forget about our weak performance, NOT!)!

The rest is history. We haven’t finished the challenge as planned but is there anything to be ashamed of? Not at all!! Are we disappointed? A bit. For sure! But we brought back home personal bests, smashing our fears and going beyond any known limit. And the best thing was that we did it together! We suffered, we helped each other, we cheered and we bonded together. Cycling is the best tool to do that – bringing people together and making them friends.

So to sum up:

It took me ~10h30m to complete 226km with 5563m of elevation gain. ~170km/3300m too short. But that’s life. There is always the next time! And knowing that I rode 250 days in a row and still managed to do 5.5km of elevation gain is still pretty awesome for me! My 366 days in the saddle goal has priority so I need to make sure I am able to finish it. And in the end we ride to make happy ourselves, not others. Ride on! Next time we smash this shit like a boss! And I bring spare neck!

What I ate during the whole challenge:

1. 3 gels (2 with caffeine, 1 without)
2. 1 piece of bread with nutella (on the way, as you know I ate also two pieces after I finished riding).
3. Two small bowls of rice with chicken soup
4. 2 bananas
5. three muesli bars

Bike:

My black mamba+Campy Zonda alu wheels+two bottles of water+lights+garmin. Nothing more, nothing less.

Training:

What training?!

Other equipment:

Magicshine MJ900 light, Garmin EDGE 1000, Garmin Epix as a backup.

Good things: 

No problems with nutrition, plenty of water and keeping it easy. Improved my descent skills where I always struggle (my first Gran Fondo in Qiandao Hu was a mess, now I’d smash it like a boss). Riding at night from the exhaustion point of view was no problem. Of course I was tired already after 10h of riding up and down but it was something that I could handle without big issue.

Bad things:

Neck pain was very demoralising…
Few cars were overtaking in blind corners which was very dangerous (but overall traffic was very small so it was safe for 99.99% of time). It was coldish at the top, super cold on descent, warm at the bottom and hot going up. It was hard to choose good layers.

Notes for future:

Make sure your core is strong, very important in such long rides where you put a lot of pressure on arms, shoulders, neck. Back also is important during long climbs as sometimes you need to get up and this engages all the core muscles. Need to improve that. Maybe we should try next time hill with less reps as doing 380km is even on flat quite hard and that is more or less the distance we were suppose to do to hit Everest…

And that’s all! If you managed to get here I congratulate you, awesome effort! Thanks for reading!