Everesting on short climb, which power should I go for?

Hi All,
I’m planning on doing an Everesting on a 625 m long (short) climb which gives me a gain of 55 m per rep. I was wondering what percentage of my FTP to use for the effort and for training. I was thinking 75% but could maybe go a little higher due to the fact that I get a minute of rest for each rep. One rep. would be arround 4 minutes and 30 sec.
/Jan

Ive no Idea what power my mate used but he Everested on Collyweston in Rutland

https://www.strava.com/segments/5705774?filter=overall

Circa 900m for a gain of just 59m (If Ive done my imperial to metric conversions right :wink:)

Good Luck :+1:

How much endurance experience do you have? I think going more like 80-85% is doable, but not if this is the first ride you’ve done over 10k vert or 7+hrs or something. High tempo should be super easy for the first few hours, then absolutely miserable in the last few.

Remember that you ONLY have a 1 minute to recover on each descent. After 4hrs your heart rate’s not really gonna come down much in that time.

Edit: revised advice in post below. Don’t do 80%

Thanks Timon,
I have done some +3 hours races and a few rides of 5 6 and 7 hours. Longest ride so far is 208 km which went really good. May have had diamonds in the legs;-) or maybe my plan wasn’t too off… I’m working on getting my FTP up a bit to 260 watt and to loose a few pounds to get to 70 kgs. So staying around 200- 205 watts on the accents would be a bit on the conservative side, but better safe than sorry right?

5 minutes up, 1 minute down would take 17.5 hours with zero rests. I’d try to limit power to 70% max – top of zone 2 is quite tiring.

Edit: also, it’s nigh-on impossible to start an Everest too easy (or any event for that matter :slight_smile: )

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My math says a little over 16 hours. 161 laps at 6min a lap. 10 laps per hour, 16 hours. Under 15 if he can actually do 4.5min up, 1min down.

On second thought though…if it’s gonna be that long, I’d agree with closer to 70%. You’re gonna be cooked trying to hold over 75%. As Chad has said…everything becomes vo2 max if you do it for long enough.

Thank you for your input Guys,
Sorry for the confusion. I should have been more clear on this: I should be able to do one whole rep (up and down) in 4.30. That’s 12 hours of riding. Ascending at 75% FTP that would mean that I would do 9 hours and 24 min riding up and resting for 2 hours and 36 minutes. In other words: my average wattage would be 156 watts for 12 hours. Too ambitious?

I would ride to feel and push on harder towards the end if my legs felt good.

I everested this spring but my scenario was pretty different with a very long climb (5miles, ~1300 ft) and descent. My moving time was 15hrs and covered about 234 miles. On the climbs I kept things around 65-70% and pedaled easy downhill around 40-50% of threshold. My weighted power ended up being about 60% or so. I’m a pretty experienced endurance rider and I didn’t really have any goals other than to finish and not totally blow up.

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@Dave, I would probably go much too hard on feel in the beginning and die trying after 6 or 7 hours :joy: :joy:

@jamesdanielosborne, That’s a good mark to have, thanks. As my fitness isn’t that great and this is my first attempt I will go for finishing the Everesting and nothing else. My focus now is to get an idea of the effort and time spend in the saddle in order not to make it any harder than necessary.

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Thanks @HLaB.

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I would strongly encourage you to keep the climbs inside of Z2 then! You’re spending 75% or more of the ride climbing, so figure that’s at least 9 hours of turning the pedals. 9 hours of Z2 is hard enough.

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I’ve only ever vEverested, but my average power was around 62% ftp and that was hard enough, only taking a couple of bathroom breaks and fueling on the “descents”.

Early on I set off at about 80% and it wasn’t so much the muscles that hurt, but more my feet, the final third was truly miserable. I think if I’d stuck to 70% then I might not have faded so much towards the end.

Though in fairness, my preparation was basically deciding one weekend I was going to do it, buying a sweet shop full of fuel and doing it the next weekend :joy:

Did a vEverest and my average power on the climb was between 65% FTP on the slowest and 75% on the fastest ascent, pretty much bang on 70% average overall. Total ride time of 10:45 but obviously a little easier than doing it outdoors as you can get off and stretch, change, raid the fridge, etc on the descent, so that was “only” about 8.5-9 hours in the saddle.

Never really felt hard from a RPE, HR or breathing perspective. It was more just struggling with energy levels from burning through so many calories and muscle soreness from spending that long riding. Especially knees as I would ideally have had one more gear so was having to grind a bit at quite low cadence which took it’s toll. I think a target of 70% is a good place to start. While it’s true that you’re unlikely to get to the end and think “I should have gone out harder!” I do think it can make sense to make hay a little bit (only talking a few %) when you feel good and energy levels are high.

In that case start off slow and aim for a low power, like bottom of zone 2.