How I Learned to Climb Hills

I have a confession. Until about a week ago I had never climbed a major hill on my bicycle. I have another confession. Since I was very young I have been afraid of exercising. It sounds ridiculous, and I'm not sure of the cause, but it may have been linked to a slight case of asthma and a severe case of clumsiness, both of which persist up to this day. I guess I've always linked exercising with that horrible feeling of gasping for breath, lungs feeling as though they have been chopped up with a very small knife, and coughing fits lasting for hours after exertion. It wasn't until I was in college that I realized this was not how everyone felt about exercise. These days I'm in much better shape than I've ever been in and I can't remember the last time I felt like I was effected by my asthma, but the fear remains.

The fear haunts me daily on our trip. Every day as I think of mounting old Betty Blue (aka my bike), I feel a panicky sense in my core that says "What if you can't do it today? What if you get hurt, out of breath, overly fatigued?" The first day of the trip I did feel that way at the end of the day. The second day I felt better, etc. until today, when I feel great! I have had my aches and pains of course, but they usually go away throughout the day, not get worse. My confidence was up.

Some people are afraid of the bears in Denali. I was afraid of the hills. The elevation map looked like a very, very bad day in the stock market, the lowest point at 1500" and the highest at almost 4000" with about four large, steep looking bumps in between. Add to that the fact that it was a dirt road (also something I hadn't ridden on very much), and that road started making appearances in my nightmares and daymares. As the day we would get into the park loomed closer and closer I started to feel myself dragging my feet. Thoughts like "Is this just the dumbest thing to do?" entered my mind. Then the girl at the reservation desk informed me that instead of riding the road in the 20-35 mile days I had imagined, we would have two days to cover the 85 miles of park road. One day we would cycle 35 miles, leaving 50 miles filled with those terrifying passes for the following day. Then we would arrive at Wonder lake, hopefully in one piece, and with both legs still attached. It was do or die, or do and die, so we did it.

The park road was fabulous, and even that first really ugly looking hill didn't finish me off although I snapped at Rusti at one point, "STOP TALKING TO ME, I AM TRYING TO CONCENTRATE ON THIS HILL!" I'm pretty sure that people on foot would have easily passed me trudging up some of those hills, especially when my back tire was spinning out on the gravel, but what I realized is something I already knew: what you put in, you get back out. Every hill has another side - a down side if you will. This down side isn't a downer at all, it's the best part of riding a bike! The views at the tops of the hills were payoff enough - Alaska's rugged landscape laid out before us in every direction like we had our own personal landscape painter - plus we got to coast down the other side of those babies without a care in the world!

I have to say Thank You to Denali for teaching me this valuable lesson, and showing me what I can do. We pulled into Wonder Lake at about 3 am to a perfect view of Denali sporting the pink alpenglow that it is renowned for. Only about 30% of park visitors see the view that we saw, and we saw it as we went down that nice long hill at the end. Previous to that wonderful sight, I was concentrating so hard on pulling up a hill that I almost hit a bear, before I heard Rusti's yells "STOP! KRISTIN! BEAR! STOP!!!!". He didn't even notice us, and neither did the other grizzly we saw foraging outside of the visitor center long after all the other visitors had left. We had the company of a fox up one of the less steep hills, carring a small rodent to her kits. We saw a perfect outline of a bull moose against a pink lake during the everlasting sunset. Sights that visitors riding the 13 hour shuttle buses in and out of the park don't get to see.

So next time you feel intimidated by a seemingly daunting task, remember to take it as it comes. And when you're going up a hill, take your eyes off the road every once in awhile, or else you may run into something large and grizzly!