Former professional rider-turned-YouTuber and ‘Strava Pro’ Phil Gaimon has set a new record for the fastest ever ‘Everesting’ of a climb.
The retired Garmin-Sharp rider took to Mountaingate Ridge Road, north of Los Angeles, in an attempt to tick off the necessary 8,848m of ascent in a time quicker 8 hours 29 minutes, the previous record held by Tobias Lestrall.
To do so, Gaimon had to ride a little over 60 continuous reps of the 920m-long climb that scaled a mighty 146.3m with each ascent due to its tough 11% average gradient.
On Monday, the 34-year-old beat the record by clocking a Strava time (and matching elapsed time, for verification) of 8 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds. Gaimon had targetted a time under 8 hours and while he did not achieve this, he will certainly be happy to have at least taken the record.
Incredibly, Gaimon managed an impressive average speed of 19.4kmh for the full duration, despite almost 9,000m of vertical ascent, covering a grand total of 156km to complete the challenge.
Posting his average power, he tapped out 259w on average while sitting very steadily at the 300w mark, give or take one or two watts, for almost every climb.
His times for almost every ascent came in at the 4 minutes 40 second mark, a full two-minutes slower than his own Strava KOM.
Gaimon’s Strava ride title gave some insight into the ride’s difficulty as he wrote: ‘There’s vomit in my beard but this suffering is a privilege. Thanks to everyone for donating to folks who suffer for real. Thanks to Ben and Emily and Kelton and Jesse and all the folks who came to yell at me.’
Since retiring from the professional sport in 2016, the American has become a YouTube star by way of ‘hunting’ infamous Strava KOMs around the world and documenting his often failed efforts on video.
Gaimon’s efforts on Mountaingate Road were not just for content, however, but rather for a good cause: raising money for the No Kids Go Hungry charity.
His goal was to reach $100,000 and as of the time of writing, just over $68,000 had been raised.