The 27-year-old always cycled up and down the same mountain in Ötztal until he reached the Mount Everest mark after 7:28 hours. In doing so, he beat the unofficial Everest record by a good twelve minutes.
Buchmann wanted to collect ten euros in donations for every metre of altitude, i.e. more than 88,000 euros in total. The target was not reached by the end of his challenge, by which time a good 14,000 euros had been received on the donations page. The money is intended in particular for the German Children's Fund.
"That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I didn't think it would hurt so much towards the end," said Buchmann and added: "At the beginning, everything was really easy, then I decided to really speed up. From 7000 metres of altitude I felt the muscles, these are regions I'm simply not used to. The last 1000 metres of altitude were brutal. But there were also a few fans there, which gave me a lot of support. In the end, it was a great experience to break the record here in Ötztal."
Buchmann covered 162 kilometres. In the process, he consumed 6870 kilocalories, which he tried to compensate for with seven bars, six gels and eleven water bottles. "As a professional cyclist, you never have time to do such crazy things, I'm almost speechless, but somehow it was also fun. Of course you can't compare it to a bike race, but I think you can see that I'm fit," said Buchmann.
