Slugging up the slog of Burnaby Mountain

This weekend my bike – Holly Go Quickly – and I climbed a mountain.

This wasn’t just any old mountain.

This was a mountain that I feared greatly last year.

This was a mountain that I used to run away from every time it was brought up as a possibility for a Saturday morning ride.

This was a mountain I wanted nothing to do with last year, but finally relented in the dwindling days of summer.

This was Burnaby Mountain.

And yet, here I am, this year’s summer hasn’t even begun, and I was readily agreeing to climbing that mountain Saturday morning.

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What changed?

Well,

  1. I didn’t have much time for a ride and that ride would be significantly less time than a jaunt into the city.
  2. The forecast called for rain later in the morning and given the shorter distance, we figured we could be back home in PJs before the wetness began … although, going up a mountain, you never know what forecasts you’ll endure, I suppose.
  3. I rode that mountain once before, I didn’t die, so surely I could do it again.

And the big one: I’ve been riding way more mileage this year than I did last year – granted, a lot of it has been on the bike trainer – and I figured my legs were primed for a climb.

I wasn’t wrong.

With the looming grey clouds overhead, and the mugginess encouraging the sweat from my pores, I plastered a steely look on my face, and focused all the energy I could into my legs.

Honestly, it didn’t feel like I was going very fast.

Every time I looked at my Garmin it showed a sluggish pace: 13 km/h, 11 km/h, 8 bloody, freaking km/h!

Even the multitude of slugs I passed seemed to be mocking me with their turbo speeds.

I kept going.

When I reached the peak, I couldn’t believe my effort. Of our small group, I was the Queen of the Mountain!

Mind you, going down I was very much the caboose 😉

SFU
Made it to the top, now to keep my head intact for the downhill!

The thing I loved most about this ride was that I didn’t think about my diabetes, not once. Don’t get me wrong, it’s there, it’s always there, but sometimes, like on this ride, it’s not overbearingly at the forefront like it so often is.

And that is just freaking glorious.

To read about my Burnaby Mountain experience last year, click here.

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