So About That Mountain

April 27th, 2005

The dumb thing about withholding updates is that I lose all my enthusiasm for the subject by the time I actually get around to writing about it. On monday we went for a long bike ride – from our house, down 50th, through both the elbow, bow river, and glenmore pathways, to eau claire, and back home through edworthy. Remember the mountain I told you about? I had attempted it once before the dog park incident. That time I spent most of my “ride” walking. It was too hard last year, and I figured it would be at least next year before I was able to ride all the way up.

It turns out the human body is pretty amazing. It’s still a killer hill, but I made it up. All the way up. The first part of the hill was okay this time. It wasn’t too steep, and it was over soon enough, ending on a nice flat strip. I remember that last time I had given up on that first section, so once I got past it, I gave myself permission to give up at any time. Because you know, I’m already ahead of where I was last year.

After that it got harder. Jim was all encouraging like those guys in the gym who do the grunting and tell their lifting partners to “do it, do it, do it!” “Grunt.” All I could do was grouchily ask him to shut up, because it wasn’t helping. Somehow it felt like I was a baby who was struggling to walk for the first time. It’s silly, but it made me feel like this was something that I couldn’t do. The truth is, until Monday, I couldn’t do it, so there was no reason for me to be all supreme being about it. Poor guy. He was nice enough to keep his encouragement to himself, and even nicer not to ride on up the hill without me.

The last part was a killer. It seems to go on forever. What made it worse was that there was a woman WALKING up the hill. Going about the same speed as we were. WALKING. She could hear me and my heavy breathing and moaning the entire time, and I’m sure she was thinking to herself “I’m so much better than fat biker girl over there.” Well. I bet she can’t ride her bike up that hill. Mreow.

We got to the top and Jim was afraid to say anything. Surely he thought I’d get all snappy again. So I looked at him and apologized and we celebrated with synchronized “yays”. The ride home after hitting that hill is nothing. In fact, it kind of feels like it’s entirely downhill. (It’s not.)

We ended the workout with a trip to the Good Earth where I had the mac and cheese that I’d been craving for a few weeks. Very yummy.

I’m kicking myself for not stopping for pictures of that hill.

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Me and my bike having a break at eau claire