Never take the easy way out.

This is a success story that has very little to do with weight loss, but it starts there. Just 3 months ago, I was about 40 pounds overweight. Over the last couple of months, I’ve lost about 30 pounds from my peak. I’ve been exercising and eating well and I’ve felt amazing. I decided to put my new found fitness to the test by completing a long bike ride through the mountains. I spent the last few weeks training hard and the day finally came yesterday.

When I initially signed up, I signed up for a 31 miler over relatively flat terrain. As the day approached, I began to consider bumping up to the next longest distance of 42 miles. The route had a huge climb of 2000 feet over 3 miles about halfway through the ride. Even up until the beginning of the ride, I hadn’t decided. I literally came to a fork in the road after about 2 miles and had to decide to take the easy way or to challenge myself. I took the challenging route and was off on my 42 mile ride. That was my first success.

After about 15 miles, I was feeling great and moving along at a nice pace (about 13 or 14 miles per hour). Then the ride started to get challenging. Through the first 15 miles, every time there was a challenging hill, there was a nice downhill on the other side to recover. When I hit mile 18, I would go up a challenging hill, look around the curve and find another even bigger hill. My pace slowed down to 6 or 7 miles per hour. I was going so slow that if I had of gone any slower, I literally would have fallen over because the bike wasn’t moving quickly enough to stay upright. I was really struggling because these up hills looked like they’d never end. I wanted to get off and walk my way up the hill. It took almost 4 miles and nearly an hour of going up seemingly endless hills to get to the peak elevation. I stopped for a second and I looked around me. The view was amazing. Another success.

When I started riding again, I went down one of the most amazing parts of the ride. It was almost 2 miles of downhill. I was flying along at 20 to 25 miles per hour and marveling that I had just made it up that challenging climb. I made it to the rest area at mile 25 and cruised the rest of the way to completing my 42 mile bike ride in just under 4 hours.
As I reflected on the ride, I realized how much this ride was like my life. There are going to be forks in the road where you’re going to have to decide to take the easy way out or challenge yourself. Trust me when I tell you how challenging yourself is so much more rewarding.

We’re going to have challenges in front of us. There are going to be times when you think you’ve reached the top of the hill only to find a bigger one in front of you. There are going to be times when you want to give up. Trust me when I tell you how amazing it is to push through those struggles and cruise down the other side. The view after beating those challenges is amazing.

Never take the easy way out. Challenge yourself, push through the struggles, enjoy those times when you can cruise, and enjoy the view from the top of your successes!