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How riding a bike got me up a mountain

We weren’t even a third of the way through our hike, but I was trying not to let my legs know. Then P spoke up. “Aren’t you glad you ride a Dutch bike?” he chirped, referring to my bike’s 50-pound heft. “My legs aren’t tired at all.

We weren’t even a third of the way through our hike, but I was trying not to let my legs know. Then P spoke up.

“Aren’t you glad you ride a Dutch bike?” he chirped, referring to my bike’s 50-pound heft. “My legs aren’t tired at all.”

“Uh, yeah,” I lied, thinking it obviously hadn’t done me a whit of good.

We were at the steepest part of the Joffre Lakes trail, pitched like the narrow staircase in my grandmother’s house, but boobytrapped with leg-sucking mud and twisted branches. And my legs were tired, thankyouverymuch, though the muscles twitches wouldn’t set in till the way down.

P had been wanting to take me to Joffre for years, and, wanting to get out of the city more -- and clinging to some idea of myself as the outdoorsy type -- I had finally agreed stopped putting it off.

The 5.5-kilometre trail isn’t that hard (it seems to be considered “intermediate” by most guides), which is to say I didn’t need to be airlifted out, and the payoff is worth it. Lunch by a glacial lake, even when it’s cloudy and/or foggy, is pretty great.

And there’s something about the fact that we got ourselves there, step by muddy step, that is immensely satisfying.

I feel the same way when I cart two weeks worth of groceries, or 50 litres of compost, a dozen plants and a small tree on my bike: a sense of power and strength, and a bit of thankfulness that my body still works, despite the fact that I spend most of my time sitting at a desk.

So P was right: Riding that heavy bike probably did help condition me a bit. It has also trained me to realize that speed isn’t always necessary, that distances can be closed steadily, that my legs can move more than I realize.