Kelowna cyclist Jacob Rubuliak spent Sunday on Knox Mountain setting the Canadian record for Everesting. He climbed 8848 metres in 9 hours and 33 minutes, riding up and down Knox 38 1/2 times.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Jacob Rubuliak

Jacob Rubuliak should have been road racing in Europe this summer but pandemics tend to get in the way of even the best-laid plans.

“I graduated from high school a semester early to have more time for racing,” Rubuliak, who is sponsored by Giant and Cyclepath, said. “I had a month in Tucson, Arizona and was supposed to leave to Europe for two months in March, for some junior nationals cups with Team Canada and Team Culture Velo but the pandemic hit and bike racing has been on hold for everyone since then.”

He was disappointed his races weren’t going to be on, but also pragmatic about it. Every race, for all levels, has been called off so instead of sulking he ramped up his training using the local landscape to hone his skills.

“I’ve been changing it up — there was the Everest ride and I went to Victoria two weeks ago and did 500 kilometres in 17 hours,” he said.

The latter is the biggest challenge he’s taken on but this weekend's feat was nothing to scoff at. He broke a Canadian record for Everesting, which is when, on one day, on one hill, 8,848 m in elevation is climbed. That is the equivalent of Mount Everest, the Earth’s highest mountain above sea-level.

Rubuliak climbed 8,848 metres in nine hours and 33 minutes, riding up and down Knox 38 1/2 times.

The extra half was to ensure he broke the record in case his Strava app didn’t match the elevation on his GPS.

The 17-year-old beat the previous record by almost 25 minutes.

Rubuliak said it’s not quite the same as completing one of his race goals, like finishing in the top eight at the World’s, but his “power-based goals” are bound to keep him in good form until life returns to some semblance of normalcy.

“You have to think out of the box and do different things,” he said, adding he hopes to get a contract with a team by the season’s end.

Rubuliak has been racing since he was 10, and rides for a team out of Vancouver, called TaG. He won the national championships for juniors for the time trial road racing, and he was also the national champion cyclocross.

—Correction: This originally said World record. It is actually the Canadian record.

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