Think sustenance not supplements and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

Nutrition can enhance or negate your training, so approach it smartly and try to stick to a healthier plan in your training.

Nutirition on the day is even more important and can ensure success or failure. As cyclists we’re used to gulping gels and swigging electrolyte drinks as our rides are quick affairs of 1 – 4 hours with the occasional 6 hour sportive.

Everesting can be 4+ times longer and requires a different approach. You will need to rely principally on “proper” foods and water and less on the gels and supplements, which you will only be using sparingly throughout or exclusively in the latter part of the ride.

Early in your training make sure you experiment with gels and electrolyte drinks to see which brands and flavours work for you over longer rides without any adverse reactions.

Do not try anything new on the day and do not think that just because you’ve been fine using the blackcurrant flavour of X brand, then the strawberry flavour will also work for you.

I can guzzle down a citrus flavour of one gel brand but as soon as I switch to orange or strawberry my body and palate says “no way”.

Discover this early on, not on the attempt.

Once you’ve found out all you need to know about your body’s reactions to the various options, put the gels, electrolytes and caffeine to one side and train only on water and bananas to accustom your body to fuelling itself from itself.

By this I mean that you need to condition your body to be able to work on its own and without chemicals for as long as possible because it not advisable (possible?) to take gels, caffeine and electrolyte drinks continuously for 20+ hours, but they will definitely have a role to play should you wish once you’re into the “normal ride length” latter stages of the attempt and will arguably be more effective as your body will not be used to them.

Think of it in terms of a 100m sprinter running 130m in training dragging a tractor tyre behind him/her so that when race day comes round, 100m with no resistance is a breeze.

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. And when you’ve finished doing that, hydrate some more.

The power of a perfectly-hydrated body is another crucial variable which is within your control, so in the 7 days preceding your attempt make sure you cut out all diuretics and are throwing back the water like there’s no tomorrow.

Any cursory Google search will pull up scientific studies on endurance athletes that state that a body that is dehydrated can have a staggering 7% to 60% drop in performance.

In short keep in mind that our bodies are around 60% water and our brains are around 85% water.

When we become dehydrated our blood becomes thicker which in turn increases our heart rate and decreases the amount of blood that can be pumped round our body, and this in turn leads to a drop in blood pressure.

In addition to this, dehydration makes it harder to get fat into our muscles which foces the muscles to use what is already there: glycogen, which is in very limited supply.

Our first Everesting was conducted on one of Hong Kong’s hottest days of the year with my Garmin recording a top temperature of 50.0 Degrees Celsius.

Despite feeling like I was smashing the water during the attempt, I still lost nearly 5kg in the 15 hours of riding and subsequently put them back on plus another 1.5kg within three days of completing the ride.