{"id":3150,"date":"2018-05-15T17:33:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T07:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/?p=3150"},"modified":"2018-05-15T17:38:48","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T07:38:48","slug":"your-mountain-is-waiting-so-get-on-your-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/2018\/05\/15\/your-mountain-is-waiting-so-get-on-your-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Your mountain is waiting so get on your way"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Road

About half way up to Falls Creek, November 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last year I was in a meeting and somehow, towards the end, the conversation angled itself around to the fact that I was going away to Bright with a big group of friends to ride up some mountains which then leads to plenty of eating and drinking. I got asked why would you ride up a mountain?<\/p>\n

At the time, all I could come up with was because it’s there?<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s so hard to explain why I ride up mountains when I most definitely do not have the right body type for it. I’m probably\u00a0 a good 10 kilos too heavy to ever find climbing easy.<\/p>\n

But for some crazy reason, I keep persisting. Since October last year, I’ve ridden up Mt Donna Buang six times. My best time was set way back in 2013, pre-Juno and when I was riding heaps. I’ve been edging closer and closer to it but now I’ll have to wait until after winter to try again.<\/p>\n

Donna isn’t by any means an easy climb. It has two incredibly steep sections, one right at the end which averages around a 10% grade and it’s a killer. Every time I get out there, I always end up wondering why I’m doing it. It causes me physical pain but yet I persist.<\/p>\n

As I’m doing it I often can’t help but think how stupid I’m being.<\/p>\n

Why am I’m willingly hurting myself? Why I am putting myself through it when there’s no obvious reward? I know it puzzles a lot of people, especially because I don’t look like someone who would willingly ride up a mountain.<\/p>\n

It’s so hard to explain to someone who doesn’t ride a bike.<\/p>\n

I always used to hate riding up mountains, really hated it. I found it so hard and the little voice in my head was always saying negative things to me like you can’t do it<\/em>, you’re too weak<\/em> or what made you think you could do this, you idiot<\/em>. The only reason I persisted was because I really, really, really loved descending. There’s nothing quite like bombing it down a mountain as fast as you can. The rush of the air, the blur of the scenery flying past, the ease. It’s the best thing in the world.<\/p>\n

Having a baby has changed my perception of climbing. For one thing, it’s given me far more patience and I understand that I can do whatever I want if I put my mind to it. I mean, I had a baby. I grew a whole new person! It kinda puts everything into perspective. My self talk has essentially boiled down to you had a baby, this is nothing!<\/em><\/p>\n

If nothing else, it gives me time to think or to simply live in the moment. It’s become a mindfulness activity for me. It’s also time I spend alone which is a luxury these days. For me, it’s turned out to be really important that I have reminders of the person I was before I became a mum and that I’m still that person (just with some added extras these days).<\/p>\n

I still don’t love climbing but these days I do have an appreciation for it.<\/p>\n

\"Trees

How could you not enjoy climbing when you get to see things like this? About half way up Lake Mountain, March 2018.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year I was in a meeting and somehow, towards the end, the conversation angled itself around to the fact that I was going away to Bright with a big group of friends to ride up some mountains which then leads to plenty of eating and drinking. I got asked why would you ride up a mountain? At the time, all I could come up …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[85],"tags":[477,422,338,377,103,141],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3150"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3174,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions\/3174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hatfullofsky.net\/littlewords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}