It's not about the suffering
Even though so much of cycling still tries to tell you that it is
The other day I was feeling good, and the sun was shining, so I got on my bike and rode out of Sheffield to the west, into the Peak District. Within a mile or so I found myself going uphill – first I climbed along gently sloping streets, lined with large Victorian houses; then the houses became smaller and newer, and the roads between them steepened; and then, quite abruptly, I left the city behind, left the trees behind, and found myself riding across windswept moorland, between rocky crags, still going up and up, towards the blazing blue sky.
And all the way, I thought about how glad I am that I moved here, how much I love riding uphill – and how strange it is to realise this, against a backdrop of cycling culture that performatively claims to hate climbing, to dread hills, to loathe the hard work that they require, or at best to relish the suffering necessitated in getting up them.
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