Fell In Love With a Road

Well, I'm back from a one woman mini-training camp. Having some time off, and sensing my "vacation" plans about to fall through and become day-trip activities around the city I was trying to get the hell away from, I shut off my mobile, left the laptop, packed up the bike and headed for the hills. Oh those hills. 

I had always disliked certain areas of this vast province I live in. Judgments based on both over exposure and non-exposure at the same time. Sometimes, when something is too familiar to you, you take it for granted. I opened my mind, traveled several hours out of the city to places that were a prominent feature of my childhood and put my tires to the tarmac; testing myself on the toughest climbs in the area. Then it happened, I fell in love with a place I used to hate because I finally really saw it for the first time.

This was a very transformative training camp for me. In recent years I had spent more time on my mountain bike because riding my road bike brought up a lot of bitter-sweet, sad memories. All that was stripped away layer by layer, climb by climb, and beneath I found the little girl who first fell in love with the freedom, the challenge and the wonder of riding a bike. I was reborn as a cyclist out on those climbs. Along with a lot of sweat, I left behind all the negative associations that had piled up around my bike and realized they didn't have anything to do with my riding. I was riding a bike long before any of the negative stuff ever happened.

Grinning like a maniac, I attacked twisting, snaking descents with a fearlessness I haven't felt in a long time. Climbing the toughest hill I have faced to date, I was overcome with a strange experience. First my arms, then my face started to tingle; not in a pins and needles sort of manner, but in a feel-good euphoric sort of way one would generally only experience if they were very fortunate during an entirely different type of cardiovascular activity. It was wild. It was definitely a cycling first for me, and I want more....

Whatever it is you used to love to do, before it became not fun anymore, before life or disappointment or negative associations got in the way, I hope you rekindle that spark and fall in love all over again. It's magical!

Doing my bike courier impersonation at the train station