It took 65 laps of a Derbyshire hill for Lizzie Hermolle to become the fastest woman to scale the height of Everest off-road last week.
The 31-year-old bested the previous record-holder, time triallist Emma Pooley, by just under two hours, in a time of 11 hours and five minutes. And after 8,848 metres of climbing and over 157km in the saddle, she had a few more laps left in her legs.
Article continues below
Hermolle is a relative newbie to the world of gravel riding. But you wouldn’t know it. In September 2025, she became British National Gravel Champion in her third ever gravel race – only four years since becoming a cyclist. She’d ditched road cycling after her coach at the time, Sean Yates, saw how she handled her bike, how she loved endurance and adventure.
“At first, I didn’t realise there was already a record,” Hermolle explained. “I thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just do it. We’ll find a hill, go up and down it. We’ll get a time, and that will be the record.’ And then we sat down for a call with the Everesting guys, and they were like, so the record to beat is 12 hours, 57. And then it became a bit more serious.”
The next big thing to sort was fuelling. Alongside her sponsors, OGT, Hermolle planned hourly lunch boxes packed full of everything her body would need at each point in the ride. What they didn’t account for, however, were the pesky snack-stealing locals.
(Image credit: OGT)
“There was this one guy – his dog ate my donuts,” Hermolle laughed. “All I wanted was a donut. It was quite early on and he was hurling abuse at me, like: ‘I don’t give a f*** about your record, you shouldn’t be here. I’m going to contact the council’ and all this. And I kind of just ignored it and just carried on. And then he was hurling abuse at the lads at the bottom. And while he was doing it, his dog ate my donuts.”
Hermolle laughs about it now, but those donuts had been reserved for when morale got low. Fortunately for her, the dog and her support crew, by the time morale dipped, Hermolle had entered into a state of flow.
“If I’m doing something long distance, I like to be quiet and go numb, almost,” she explained. “I think that’s how my mindset changes. So at first, I’m fine, and then I go into a numbness, where I try not to think about anything other than what number rep I’m on. I had little markers up the hill. There was a halfway point, and I was like, if I hit that in four minutes, I’m happy. And then the next bit was two minutes to the top. And you just play games in your head, working out distances and times, and that’s kind of all I thought about really.”
(Image credit: OGT)
On her journey up – and down – Sheep Pasture Incline, she was joined in bouts by support crew, by well-wishers and horse riders cheering her on, or joining her for part of the challenge. She passed one dog walker out on their morning walk only to see them again on their afternoon one.
It’s only been a week since Hermolle became the fastest woman to scale the height of Everest off-road, but she’s already looking to the future. After one recovery day, she was back on the bike, ready to head to Sierra Nevada for an altitude camp before tackling Utopia Gravel, Tracker 560 and then onto Unbound.
(Image credit: OGT)
Out of the saddle, Hermolle is a storyteller. When she entered – last minute – into the British National Gravel Championships, she didn’t realise it would change the course of her professional career.
“I’m obviously older coming into the sport. So it’s just nice to kind of tell people that you never know what’s going to happen, and your life can change so dramatically,” she said. “I’ve gone from been a full time physio in a clinic to riding my bike now professionally.”
From a football career to a road cycling one, and then onto becoming a national gravel champion and an Everesting world record holder, Hermolle wants to be proof that you can do anything, if you put in the hours.
“You just never know. One decision can just massively change everything.”
