I am now the fastest woman to scale the height of Everest by bike, off-road.
11 hours. 5 minutes. 65 laps of Sheep Pasture Incline in Derbyshire. 8,848 metres of climbing. 157+ kilometres.
The previous record was held by time triallist Emma Pooley. I beat it by nearly two hours.
I still don’t think I’ve fully processed it.
The Route
Sheep Pasture Incline near Matlock is not glamorous. It’s a 10.9% gradient climb, followed by a sharp one-minute descent, repeated until your legs stop working and your brain gives up trying to count. That’s the entire challenge: go up, come down, go up again.
The slope is brutal enough that each lap is meaningful, but short enough that the descent gives you a genuine recovery window. It’s a rhythm. Once you find it, you don’t break it.
I ended up doing half an hour more climbing than the record required — just to be absolutely certain.
“I reckon I did half an hour more than we needed to, but we just wanted to make sure we definitely hit it.”
The Mental Game
Everesting is less a physical test than a psychological one. You are not racing anyone. You are not chasing a finish line. You are simply counting.
My approach to efforts like this is to go quiet. Almost numb.
“If I’m doing something long distance, I like to be quiet and go numb, almost… I try not to think about anything other than what number rep I’m on.”
That’s it. Rep 23. Rep 24. Rep 25. Don’t think about rep 65. Just think about the next one.
The Dog Incident
There was a man. There was a dog. There were donuts.
My support crew had set aside a box of donuts for me — hourly nutrition, meticulously planned with OGT throughout the day. While I was grinding out laps, a local resident let his dog help itself to my reserved stash, then proceeded to verbally abuse my support crew.
I came back to find the donuts gone.
“His dog ate my donuts. All I wanted was a donut.”
I kept riding.
The Support
None of this happens without a crew. OGT planned my hourly nutrition boxes and supported the attempt from start to finish. Thank you to everyone who was out on that hill — including the people who had to deal with the donut situation without me knowing until after.
What Comes Next
Within a week of the record, I was back in training. Altitude work in Sierra Nevada is next, then the race calendar gets serious: Utopia Gravel, Traka 560, and Unbound.
The Everesting is done. The season is just beginning.
Lizzie is supported by Merlin Cycles, Ventum Racing, OGT, Gravaa, and Questa Financial Planning. Coached by Jacob Tipper at JT Performance Coaching.