The Up Hills of Life

Usually my Sundays are reserved for hiking with my husband or going to the gym with the husband.  Whatever I decide to do; its with my husband.  I try to keep my long bike rides to during the week.  However, I knew that rain was coming this week and yesterday was so gorgeous, I decided to head out for some hill training.

Just outside my door and around the corner are some amazing steep hills. It's pretty much up hill for 9 miles!  There are some down hill stretches, but for the most part, it is UP UP and UP!  I decided to take this route.  Up S. Cole Road.  Turn left onto Hollilyn and go up some more (but not nearly as steep).  Then at the stop sign/end of the road turn right again onto Pleasant Valley Road where it is an immediate steep up hill, up and over the bench of farm land.  This part is so steep for a mile or so that it actually turns a 2 lane road into 3 to give the up hill direction 2 lanes.  Then you get to the top and you keep going on that road for a bit and there is this beautiful steep downhill that gives way to another very steep up hill and that is the last of the up hill for this ride until the last 7 miles!  This ride was a total of 35 miles that I did in under a 5 minute mile pace, but with all of this up hill I only  had an elevation gain of 1369.  I guess the gain was just steep, not long.  Tell that to my lungs that had to keep stopping along the longest hill!

It was truly a beautiful day for a bike ride and I loved every minute of it.  I took several short videos during my ride, but this is the one that stands out......

It dawned on me while I was on this mile long steep hill that I just wished it would be over with.  I couldn't see the end.  All I could see was that this hill kept on going around a bend.  Having taken this road several times on a car and once on a bike, I knew that at some point this hill would end, but its not always like that in life, is it? Sometimes we find ourselves fighting this "up hill battle" and it feels like it is never going to stop and we wish and wish with all of our might that it would just come to an end and we could coast for a bit.  We get so wrapped up in the toil of the up hill, that we don't see the gifts of that moment.  We don't see the strength we are building.  We don't see the beauty around us. We just keep our heads down and keep pushing. But what would it be like if we held our heads up high and smiled and recognized the gifts in THAT moment? I'm willing to bet that the joy we would feel would be amazing and suddenly that hill would not seem so impossible!  As much fun as the downhills are, its the up hills that make life so much more enjoyable!

Thank you for following me in this adventure!  To find more information on the Fuller Center for Housing, the Bike Adventure, or to make a donation to my $2000 goal, please click here.