He's in Colorado, I'm in France so this is your basic long distance competition that came about by chance. This spring he did a fine ride with a friend of his that included just over 4000 ft of climbing. A bit later I thought I'd see if I could match that or maybe even surpass it by a few hundred feet but ended up tacking another 2700 feet on to his number. Which I have to admit made me rather happy. Naturally he responded and bagged 7880 ft. Okay, the match was on. Some time later I rolled out on my birthday, a day I always enjoy riding on as I'm usually quite strong that day, and thus celebrated turning 64 with a fine ride that raised the vertical bar to almost 8700 ft. To be honest I figured that would be about the end of the game for me for awhile, especially after he came back with 9300 ft! But after a bit of time I had this ride in mind that I'd wanted to do for awhile that might just be able to raise the bar once again. Et voila, I did it, though admittedly rather slowly at the end with numerous stops due to lots of sustained double digit grades, including a long section that averages 16%, plus the fact that by then I'd already done a lot of km plus way more grades over 10% than I'd expected to hit. Anyway at the end I was looking at 12000 ft of climbing and around 85 km of distance. That made me downright ecstatic.
My son is still figuring out how he can respond to that one. I should add that I have a huge advantage over him because of where I live, in the Alps where there's an all but limitless supply of excellent roads with lots of vertical. His choices in Colorado are vastly more limited and as he's like me in the sense that he's not interested in simply repeating roads to accumulate the numbers, coming up with a route that will surpass 12000 ft isn't easy. But then again he's 37 years younger so I have no doubt at all that soon enough he'll post some numbers to which I will be unable to respond. Unless I can get in enough training to get stronger and then slip off down south and bag a Ventoux triple which would tack another 2100 ft or so onto my max!
Anyway a rather fun competition with my son that rather nicely manages to bridge the distance between Boulder and Grenoble.