Someone has invented a new cycling “competition.” Well, let’s call it an activity, or maybe a misadventure. It’s called Everesting, and the gist is this:

• You pick a cycling climb somewhere near you
• Sort out its elevation gain
• Ride repeats until you gain 8,848 meters (29,029 feet in American)
• Claim your Everest!

Right. Very, very silly.

My first thought was “gosh, that’s absurd.”

My second was “I’ll bet you can’t do that in Houston without riding way more than a century,” and it turns out I’m right.

The tallest bridge in the area is the Kemah bridge. It’s got an elevation gain of 66 feet, an average grade of 4%, and is half a mile long.

You’d have to ride it 440 times, covering 220 miles, to claim an Everest.

Then, after my ride tonight, I noticed something disheartening. I only started using Strava in April, so I’m missing the first three months of the year, but these are my YTD stats:

That’s right. Given that about 5,000 feet of my climbing was on the MS150, it’s entirely possible I won’t ride an Everest’s worth of climbing in the whole of 2014.