Everesting Villach: Shared Suffering Is Half the Suffering

Everesting is cycling in its purest—and perhaps most brutal—form: ride the same climb over and over until you've accumulated 8,848 meters of elevation gain, the height of Mount Everest.

For those not quite ready to spend 12–24 hours chasing the full Everest, there's the team category. As an eight-person team, we lined up in Villach at the end of May to take on the challenge together. Ahead of us was the Villach Alpine Road up to Dobratsch: 16 kilometers and 1,200 meters of climbing, with one goal—get our team to the top as fast as possible.

What made the experience special was that most of us had never met before. A quick dinner the night before, a few conversations about bikes and racing, some fresh SYN kits, and that was about all the preparation we had. Yet from the very beginning, everything felt easy, fun, and familiar. Every team member was a perfect fit.