I still remember sitting on the side of the road at 3am, legs cramping, headlight flickering, with another 2,000 metres of climbing still to go. It was my first Everesting, and I was absolutely convinced I had made a catastrophic mistake. Two hours later, as the sun started to rise and I crested the hill for what felt like the thousandth time, I knew I would be back. The Everesting cycling challenge does that to you. It breaks you, rebuilds you, and leaves you inexplicably hungry to do it again.
I have now completed multiple Everestings on outdoor climbs, a 10K Everesting on the Ballon d’Alsace (10,000m+), and 3 virtual Everestings on Alpe du Zwift. So when I say I know this challenge inside out, I genuinely mean it. In this article, I will walk you through everything. What Everesting actually is, how to pick your climb, how to pace and fuel it, what the other guides never tell you about the mental side, and why I believe every serious endurance cyclist should attempt it at least once.
If you want the official rules, everesting.com has them fully documented. But for the real-world perspective, what it feels like to be out there at 4am, freezing, questioning every life choice you have ever made, you are in the right place.
What Is the Everesting Cycling Challenge?
In its simplest form, Everesting means climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest’s altitude, 8,848 metres, in a single, continuous activity. No sleep, no motorised transport, no shortcuts. You pick a climb, you go up it, you come back down, and you repeat until your GPS records 8,848m of elevation gain. That is it. That is the whole thing. And yet it is one of the most demanding physical and psychological endeavours in amateur sport.
The concept traces back to George Mallory (son of the famous Everest climber), who rode up Mt Donna Buang in Australia repeatedly in 1994. It was formalised as a structured challenge (the Everesting cycling challenge) in 2014 by the Hells 500 club in Melbourne, and it has since grown into a truly global phenomenon with over 35,000 verified completions across 125 countries.
The Four Official Tiers
What many newcomers do not realise is that Everesting is not a single fixed target anymore. The official challenge now offers four elevation tiers, making it accessible to a much wider range of cyclists:
- Quarter Everesting — 2,212m. A legitimate challenge that will surprise even experienced riders.
- Half Everesting — 4,424m. Now you are in serious territory. Most people need 8–12 hours.
- Full Everesting — 8,848m. The classic. Expect 15–24 hours depending on your fitness and climb selection.
- 10K+ Everesting — 10,000m or more. I have done this. It is completely unhinged. I love it.
The core rule applies to all tiers: the elevation must be completed in a single continuous activity with GPS recording active throughout. No sleep is permitted. All transitions between climbs must be under your own power. Everything else, timing, location, support crew, is your choice.
How to Pick the Perfect Climb for your Everesting Cycling Challenge
This single decision will make or break your attempt more than any other factor. Get it wrong and you will either destroy your knees, add unnecessary hours to your total time, or create a descent so technical that repeating it in the dark becomes genuinely dangerous.
Gradient Is Everything
Most Everesting Cycling Challenge veterans recommend something in the 6–10% average gradient range. Steeper than that and you will trash your legs too quickly; shallower and you will spend an eternity descending for minimal elevation gain. The sweet spot is 7–8% average. Enough gradient to bank metres efficiently without pulverising your muscles in the first half of the attempt.
For Belgian cyclists, finding a long, consistent climb is its own challenge. We do not have the Alps on our doorstep. But the advantage is that our roads are often quiet at night, traffic is manageable, and, when you find a suitable hill, you usually have it to yourself. I have done Everestings on local climbs that most people would not even recognise as proper hills. You work with what you have. The elevation does not care how scenic the road is.
Single Climb vs. Multiple Climbs
The classic approach is one single climb, repeated until done. This is psychologically brutal. , you are staring at the same piece of tarmac for potentially 20 hours, but it is logistically simple. Your support crew knows exactly where you will be at all times. You can set up a proper feed station at the bottom. You do not have to think about navigation at 2am when your brain has turned to soup.
Multiple climbs are permitted under the rules, as long as all transitions are self-powered. I have tried both approaches. For a first attempt, stick to a single climb. Save the creative routing for later when you know what you are doing. My multiple climb Everesting Cycling Challenge was on the Mont Ventoux. I climbed all 3 sites twice and added part of the Malaucène a 3rd time to reach the Everest altitude.
Road Surface and Familiarity
Belgian roads are not always kind to equipment, especially the hilly South. I say this as someone who has broken components on tarmac that looked perfectly smooth. When you are descending in the dark for the 30th time, you need to know every pothole, every drain cover, every adverse camber. Familiarity with the descent is a genuine safety issue, not just a time-saving consideration. Pick a climb you have ridden before, ideally at night.
Real-World Planning — What the Guides Never Tell You
Most Everesting Cycling Challenge articles cover the basics: nutrition, gearing, pacing. What they gloss over is the operational complexity of spending 18+ hours on a single stretch of road with equipment that has to keep working throughout all of it.
Equipment Preparation
Your wheels will take a specific kind of punishment during an Everesting. Not the varied stress of a long road trip, but highly repetitive load through the same descending line, over and over. I run good tyres with slightly higher-than-normal pressure for the descending sections and always carry two spare tubes and a proper floor pump and my Cucplus e-bike pump at the feed station. On my 10K Everesting on the Ballon d’Alsace, the wheel reliability was something I thought about seriously in advance. Because a mechanical at hour 18 with 800m still to climb is not a theoretical problem, it is a DNF waiting to happen.
Lights are non-negotiable. You will almost certainly ride through the night. I run a front light with at least 6 hours of battery at high output, plus a fully charged backup, and rear lights with fresh batteries. Brief your support crew on recharging protocols. This is not optional kit, it is survival infrastructure.
My Everesting bike the past 4 times is the Winspace T1550 Gen2 (its successor is the T1600 ultra). A perfect combination of lightweight, aerodynamics and comfort.
Your Everesting Cycling Challenge Support Crew
You can do Everesting solo, and some people have. But for a first attempt, having even one support person at the base of the climb changes everything. They can hand you food, refill bottles, check your lights, swap your kit if the temperature drops, and, crucially, talk you out of quitting at hour 14 when the voice in your head is making a very convincing case for stopping.
Brief your support crew in advance on what a genuine crisis looks like versus the normal suffering of the dark hours. At hour 16, “I want to stop” is not the same as “something is medically wrong.” The two can look deceptively similar from the outside.
Weather and Timing
Most experienced Everesting riders start between midnight and 2am. This puts the hardest, darkest hours at the beginning when you are still fresh enough to manage them mentally, and you hit daylight with momentum and banked metres. There is something genuinely uplifting about watching the sun rise over a climb you have already ascended a dozen times. It is the universe acknowledging your stubbornness.
In Belgium, summer nights are short and relatively mild. That said, a hilltop at 4am in July can still be 10°C colder than the valley below. Pack a light gilet or arm warmers that you can stash in a jersey pocket on each ascent and pull on for the descent. Managing body temperature over 20 hours is a real skill and one that many first-timers underestimate.
The Mental Game — The Part Nobody Warns You About
I have ridden 630 kilometres in a single 24-hour challenge. I have raced through the Pyrenees in events that took everything I had. And I still say that the Everesting Cycling Challenge is among the most mentally demanding things I have done on a bike. Specifically because of the repetition.
In a long road event or brevet, the scenery changes, challenges evolve, there is always something new demanding your attention. Everesting gives you one road, repeated. Your brain will rebel. Around the 12–14 hour mark, when you have descended that same slope dozens of times and you know exactly what is waiting at the top and the bottom, the psychological weight of knowing you have to do it again — and again, and again — is significant.
What works for me: break the attempt into tiny chunks. Not “I have 4,000m left” but “I am just doing the next three ascents.” Focus only on the climb in front of you. Count remaining repetitions in small batches, never the full total. Podcasts and music help during climbs; silence and sharp focus are better for descents. And when the dark thoughts come, and they will, reliably, somewhere between 3am and 5am, remind yourself that this discomfort is exactly what you signed up for. If it were easy, anyone could do it.
Nutrition and Pacing for a Successful Everesting
Pacing — The Most Common Mistake
First-timers almost always go too hard early. Everesting is not a race against the clock (unless you are chasing a record, which you are not on your debut). Your only job is to reach 8,848m of climbing. Go too hard on the first three ascents and you will be cooked by hour ten. Go embarrassingly conservatively and you will surprise yourself with what you have left at the finish.
My rule: the first ascent should feel easy enough that you are a little concerned you are going too slow. If you are breathing hard on rep one, you are already in trouble. Think of this as a 20-hour ride, because it probably will be one.
Fuelling Over 15–24 Hours
Aim for 60–90g of carbohydrates per hour. A mix of real food and gels/isotonic drinks is essential. The variety matters enormously on an attempt this long. I lean heavily on salty nuts, some Doritos or what we call Chips (not French fries chips) in the middle sections and even a dry pork suasage, because the moment when sweet food starts tasting revolting is a real phenomenon and it hits most people around hour 10. Save the big gels with caffeine or your guarana shots for the final stretch when you need every available watt.
Hydration is easy to neglect on cold nights when you are not visibly sweating. Drink to a schedule, not to thirst. Include electrolytes from the very first hour. Cramping mid-descent at hour 15 in the dark is not a situation you want to experience firsthand.
My facorite isotonic sports drink is Maurten and more specifically the Maurten 320 mix. Why? Because one sachet contains 80 grams of carbohydrates when mixed with 500 ml of water. This is exactly what you need for a one hour effort. My body is so used to it that I even don’t eat or drink anything else the first 5 to 6 hours. Besides, Maurten doesn’t contain acids. Better for your stomach and your teeth. Nevertheless, isotonic drinks are a personal thing. Test and try different drinks and choose the one which suits you the best.
Everesting Variants — vEveresting and the 10K
The virtual Everesting, done on platforms like Zwift, most commonly up Alpe du Zwift, is a genuinely different experience. No weather, no descending in the dark, no traffic. But absolutely still brutal. The monotony of staring at a screen for 10–14 hours is its own specific form of suffering, and the lack of environmental variety makes the mental challenge arguably harder, not easier. I have completed a vEveresting on Alpe du Zwift and I would encourage any serious endurance cyclist to try it, particularly as winter training or when outdoor conditions are not viable. Find some more info about my Virtual Everesting here.
The 10K Everesting, climbing 10,000 metres or more in a single continuous activity, is the format for people who felt the standard Everesting was not quite punishing enough. Yes, those people exist. I am one of them. My 10K attempt was one of the most demanding things I have ever done on a bike. The extra 1,152 metres beyond the standard target sounds modest until you are already 20 hours in and every metre feels negotiated rather than ridden. I have done my 10K everesting on Ballon D’Alsace in France. You can read my 10K Everesting story here.
Is the Everesting Cycling Challenge Right for You?
Who Should Attempt It
If you can comfortably ride 200km+ and have some big mountain days in your legs, you have the physical foundation for an Everesting attempt. It is less about peak power than about endurance, pacing discipline, and psychological resilience. I have seen riders with modest FTPs complete Everestings in excellent times because they paced perfectly and ate consistently. I have seen much stronger riders DNF because they treated the first quarter like a race.
The ultra-cycling community sometimes dismisses Everesting as gimmicky. Just going up and down the same hill. Big mistake. The mental and physical demands are completely legitimate, and what you learn about your own limits, pacing, and nutrition management translates directly into every other endurance event you will ever enter.
Pros and Cons Everesting Cycling Challenge
- ✅ Pro: Accessible to almost any serious endurance cyclist. No need to travel to a fixed event location on a fixed date
- ✅ Pro: Fully self-directed: you choose your hill, your timing, your crew
- ✅ Pro: Hall of Fame recognition and a genuinely warm, global community
- ✅ Pro: Teaches more about pacing and nutrition management than almost any other single event
- ❌ Con: The repetition is psychologically brutal. This is a particular kind of suffering, not everyone’s preference
- ❌ Con: Nearly impossible to fully simulate in training. Nothing completely prepares you for hour 16
- ❌ Con: Logistics require real planning, especially around night riding and crew coordination
Final Everesting Cycling Challenge Verdict
The Everesting cycling challenge is one of the most honest things you can do on a bike. There is no peloton to hide in, no route variation to distract you from the simple, brutal arithmetic of 8,848 metres. Just you, your bike, one hill, and the question of whether you are willing to keep going when everything in your head is telling you to stop.
I keep coming back to it, multiple standard Everestings, a 10K, a vEveresting on Zwift, because it never stops teaching me things about my own limits and how to extend them. If you are serious about ultra-distance cycling and you have not done an Everesting yet, put it on the list. You will not regret it. (You will absolutely regret it at 4am. But you will not regret it overall.)
Have you done an Everesting, or are you planning your first attempt? Drop a comment below — I would love to hear about your climb choice, how you paced it, and whether you survived the dark hours with your sanity intact.
