Last Night's Workout, Climbing

Jeez, these people are going to kill me.  Last night, I met with the MTC for a bike ride.  The plan was to go for a ride on Mount Pleasant.  Now, I've been here before, so I already know what I am getting in to.  Let's just say that it is much more "Mount" than it is "Pleasant".  It basically looks like this:

Now, I'll be honest.  I don't like hills.  I am no good at hills.  I know I have to work on them, but I don't want to, because they are hard, and gravity tells me that I want to go DOWN, not UP.  But alas, I meet up with the club, and off we go.  At the bottom, our workout is explained to us.  Go up the mountain.  Then go down.  And repeat x4.  With each ascent, push a little bit harder, with the last one being all out.  

Wonderful.

The first couple times up aren't too bad, but I realize that I only have 1 speed on hills.  That speed is "try to keep moving forward".  At some points, I even had a hard time maintaining this pace.  Each climb for me ended up being 7'30"-8'00", and that is with no flat spots, going as best as I could to just keep moving.  It made for a LONG workout.  I was ready to quit after the 4th time up, but the guys and girls that I was climbing with kept pushing me to keep going, so I did.  The last one hurt.  A lot.  But I made it up, and no problems, and I am better off for it.  Amazingly, I can still walk today.  Hopefully tomorrow isn't too bad.

But downhills are fun!