CyclingTips Podcast: Everesting on Everest and five minutes of Chris Froome

Everesting. noun | An endurance challenge performed on a bicycle, where a cyclist repeatedly climbs a single hill until the combined elevation gain reaches 8,8489m, the height of Mt. Everest.

What if someone Everested on Everest itself? CyclingTips own Andy Van Bergen gave it a shot, and he’s on the podcast to chat about preparation, altitude sickness, and the emotion that builds behind any massive endeavour.

But before we get to Andy’s Everesting attempt, it’s been a busy week and we have a lot to cover.

CyclingTips Tech Editor James Huang loves a good e-bike, but he thinks the e-bike discussion is focused on the wrong sort of bikes. James shows us the power of his e-cargo bike by riding all of the heavy audio equipment used for this podcast out to our hosts at Pearl Izumi, more than 20km away from his house in Boulder. In jeans.

Lance Armstrong was recently invited to the Tour of Flanders, and he’s accepted the invitation. What does he get out of it? What does the race get? What do we get?

USA Cycling is borrowing from the British cycling model with its new National Team, and Neal Rogers brings us a report on the changes.

There isn’t much left to say about Chris Froome’s salbutamol situation that hasn’t already been said. So we decided to give the topic exactly five minutes. Sort of. Neal starts a timer and Caley Fretz provides a brief update — and a small rant about the term “positive test.”

All this and more in this week’s episode of the CyclingTips podcast.

Click here for a direct download, and here to listen on Soundcloud. The CyclingTips podcast is now on Spotify, as well, and you can listen to it there. Or just subscribe to the CyclingTips Podcast via RSS, iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.

After you’ve listened, please leave your feedback — what worked, what didn’t, what you’d like more of — in the comments section below.