Ystwyth CC member Gethin Howells took on the Everesting challenge in June this year and achieved the incredible feat of climbing 8848 meters on a local gravel climb known as the ‘legburner’, earning his place in the Everesting Hall of Fame.
This is known as the most difficult climbing challenge in the world. The idea is simple, pick any hill, anywhere in the world and complete repetitions of that hill in one go until you reach 8848 meters which is equivalent to – yep you guessed it…Everest.
Gethin has shared his Everesting experience…
“I’m quite a fan of band wagons. A couple of years ago I jumped on the gravel riding band wagon and over the Covid lockdown Everesting turned out to the wagon to jump on as everyone was having a go. As I’d been training quite hard over the last few months (exactly why I’m not sure!!) I thought I’d combine my love of gravel riding with the new world wide obsession of Everesting. I played around with a few locations for the attempt but eventually decided that it had to be the Legburner as it’s such a local icon.
The weather wasn’t amazing on the day of the attempt however this probably helped me as I don’t do too well with hot weather and the tail wind up the climb was not unwelcome!!! After starting just before 5am, the first half flew by. I had great legs and hit the half way point in less than six and a half hours. Inevitably the second half felt a lot harder but fortunately this is when all the friends and family I’d told about the attempt turned up despite the wind and rain at times and rode a few laps with me or passed me supplies from my box of goodies. My low point was at 32 laps, I wasn’t sure if I could make it but once I got to 40 laps I knew there was no quitting after that point. I reached the magic number of 8848m just before the end of lap 48 but did one more just to make sure I’d done enough.
It was a seriously tough day out however it was probably less than 24hrs before I started dreaming of the next stupid challenge to pit myself against!!”
