Everesting indoors: how to climb 8,848 m without leaving your pain cave

Everesting is brutally simple to describe: pick one climb and repeat it until you've ascended 8,848 m — the height of Everest — in a single activity. No sleep, no time limit, one hill. Since lockdowns normalised riding enormous distances in garages, the virtual version — vEveresting — has become a fixture too, with official rules maintained by Hells 500, the movement's founders. Check their current specifics before an attempt you want ratified; the summary here covers the spirit, not the fine print.

Is indoors harder or easier? Honestly: both

The folklore says indoor Everesting is harder because "there are no descents to recover on". That's half wrong — the descents are exactly where the recovery happens, indoors and out. What actually differs is how the virtual descent is handled. Outdoors you freewheel down at speed, cold and gripping the brakes. Indoors, depending on the platform and the rules you're riding under, you either spin gently down the virtual descent, use a course that turns you around, or take the descent as near-zero-power soft-pedalling. Either way you're still on the bike, still turning legs, and the descent takes longer at trainer speeds than a real 60 km/h plunge — so the ratio of pedalling to coasting is genuinely worse indoors. That part of the folklore holds.

Everything else tilts the other way. The nutrition table is at your elbow instead of in a car boot. There's no weather window to gamble on, no traffic, no darkness, no descent crash risk at hour fourteen, and a toilet ten steps away. You can hold a perfectly steady power in a way no real hairpinned climb allows. Most riders who've done both call the indoor version mentally harder and logistically far easier — which is a trade you can prepare for.

The maths: reps, VAM and the length of your day

Two numbers define the attempt. First, metres gained per rep — the climb's length times its gradient. Second, your VAM (vertical metres climbed per hour), which sets how long the whole thing takes. All figures below are approximate worked examples:

"Door-to-door" adds virtual descents, food stops and faff — which reliably eat 20–35% on top of pure climbing time. Your day will be longer than the maths says. Everyone's is.

Climb choice is a real decision. A steeper climb gains height more time-efficiently but demands low-cadence grinding for hours — brutal on the knees and back. A gentler gradient is kinder but stretches the day. Most successful indoor attempts settle around 6–9% gradients, ridden at a deliberately boring pace: if the first rep feels comically easy, your pacing is roughly right.

It's an eating contest with pedalling attached

Past a certain fitness level, Everesting attempts are decided by the gut, not the legs. You'll burn many thousands of calories, and the limiting factor is how much you can absorb while riding: aim for the trained ceiling of roughly 60–90 g of carbohydrate per hour, every hour, from the very first hour — bottles, gels, rice cakes, real food in rotation before sweetness fatigue sets in. Add sodium throughout; over a 15-hour sweat-fest indoors, plain water alone is a cramping, hyponatraemia-flavoured mistake. The rule that matters: never ride into a deficit and plan to eat your way out later. By the time you feel hollow, you're already two hours behind. And rehearse all of it on long training rides first — attempt day is the wrong time to discover a gel disagrees with you.

Setting up the cave for a 15-hour day

Are you ready to attempt it?

Good news first: you don't need pro numbers, and you don't need mythical 10,000-metre climbing weeks in training — nobody sensible prepares that way. What you need is a deep, unglamorous base and proof that your body tolerates very long days. Honest benchmarks before you pencil in a date:

One safety line that belongs in every Everesting article: a 12–18 hour maximal day is a serious physiological event. Build up to it over months, don't attempt it ill or sleep-deprived, and treat quitting at 6,000 m as data for the next attempt, not failure. The mountain doesn't move.

Pick a climb worth marrying for a day

You're going to see this climb forty times. Make it one you care about. In Moveee Indoor you can load a real famous climb — or any climb you love — as a GPX route and ride it in a 3D world built from the actual road and elevation data, in your browser, with your trainer's resistance tracking every gradient change. Alpe d'Huez reps, your local col, the climb from a race you dream about: pick one, and every lap is the real profile of a real road, saved straight to Strava when the long day is finally done.