i’m turning 34. do i bike up another hill?
57 minutes on mt. washington, a 30,000 feet gravel everesting, and why choosing to give up on a goal can be an achievement
My watch alarm goes off, a silent, gentle vibration on my wrist. It’s 6am on Saturday morning, August 17, 2024. Outside the hotel window is a familiar view of Mt. Washington at dawn. In about two hours I will be climbing up this 6,000 foot rock pile for the 13th time.
I’ve been here enough times when feelings from previous years start tangling together. By “here” I don’t mean just the place, but “here” as in the hours leading up to the race. It gets difficult to know if the feeling I’m having is from a moment in the past, a future feeling I envisioned for this day, or a feeling that belongs to now.
On the chair next to my bed, I have a bagel, banana, breakfast shake, and my kit with my number pinned. Leaning against the wall is my bike with it’s timing chip on the seat post, and taped to the handlebars, my target time splits for each mile and a mantra I’ve been repeating to myself, “Present. Not Past. Now. Not Next.”
I open the reminders app on my phone to go down my checklist.
Meditate and breathing exercises for 30 minutes on the hotel balcony. Warm up for 45 minutes on the rollers in the parking lot. Listen to my game day playlist, take a gel, finish my water bottle, and pedal over to the start line 15 minutes before the start. And make sure Jenna drives up with my recovery drink, comfortable clothes, and the phone I’m holding.
All this planning for an 11 year goal that isn’t even mine.
I roll over to the start line and make my way through the Top Notch wave. I don’t want to be on the front row. But this is one of the only races where I’m expected to be up here. The familiar pre-race chatter buzzes around me — nervous, hopeful, filled with personal rituals. Hundreds of people all carrying something to the top of this mountain. A selfish goal. A selfless cause. A belief to suffer for.
Standing over my bike, my heart is resting a little over 120bpm. I switch pages on my Garmin, that’s too much information for me to handle right now. I look around and wave to a few people I see regularly at these races. We banter a bit, crack a few jokes, and wish each other luck for this race. I see my dad warming up. He’s looking forward to my result today.
When asked why I race bikes and climb mountains, I would answer that my dad is the reason for why I do this. And while that was true when I first started racing, I don’t believe that is the only reason anymore. Something is different this time, and I’m asking myself questions that feel deeply unrooted.
Am I ambitious? Or just insecure? Am I pushing myself to grow? Or just afraid of what happens when I stop?
What happens if I don’t achieve this goal today? What if I never do? What will people think? Will my dad want me to try again next year? I don’t think I can go through this again. Would that disappoint him?
It feels good, and easy to say, that I don’t care about what other people think about me. But what’s true right now, and more difficult to admit, is that I care deeply about what other people think.
I don’t want to be here. I just want to make my friends and family proud. To meet their expectations of me. To be seen as strong by people I don’t know. To be told I am fast. But most of all, I want to fast forward and free my mind of this goal — finishing under one hour.
I close my eyes.
what am I climbing to?
Every year, the hillclimb up Mt. Washington is about two weeks after my birthday. That event has been an annual marker for my self identity.
Looking back at my Strava history, for three of my birthdays, I’ve climbed Mt. Ascutney to train for this race. The first time in 2014, when the goal of getting Top Notch and a dream of finishing under an hour first surfaced.
Little did my 22 year old self know that I would be moving 15 minutes away. That I would see this mountain from my window every day. That I would climb it over 40 more times, and still be racing Mt. Washington in 2024.
The obsession over marginal gains started back then — the gearing, power to weight ratio, how cutting weight, every single gram, can save time. My target watts per kilo, my race weight, my weight weenie build, all this information permanently stored in my mind for the climb. 280w for an hour. 124lb race weight. 24t front chainring. 11-28t rear cassette.
I would add up the weights of my bike frame and its components in a separate spreadsheet. No handlebar tape. Only one brake caliper. 12lbs for the complete build. I would input these totals into Doug Jansen’s hill climb calculator to estimate my finish time on Mt. Washington. I would continue to tinker so I can increase my chances.
It was fun.
In 2017, I came within nine seconds of completing my one hour goal, and two spots away from the overall podium. I think about if I took this “fun” more seriously back then, would I have made that difference?
In 2025, I’m turning 34, and those goals on the bike are not as motivating anymore. It has me questioning why I race. About the effort I put into it.
I’ve never actually won a bike race. At best, a second or third place, or a respectable time close to the front. If I put in more effort, I know I can be first. But the thought of winning, visualizing myself crossing the finish line and standing at the top step of the podium next to my two rivals who I beat to the line — it doesn’t feel like something I truly want. But if given the opportunity to win, of course I would take it.
Yet, something feels guilty if I were to achieve that. It feels shameful to focus on myself — in competing and chasing PRs. And tangled with that feeling, if I don’t keep climbing, I feel dishonesty.
why am i climbing?
I grew up as an only child. With just my mom and dad, I took example from them. For the better or worse, my beliefs have been intertwined with theirs, grounded in Filipino culture and Catholic values.
Hiya. To respect others and show humility.
Pakikisama. To pursue togetherness in my relationships.
Pagkakabuklod ng pamilya. To have unconditional love for my family.
When I was 12, my dad had started his sobriety. It was around the same time he picked up cycling again. We watched the Tour de France together, wore matching kits, and did a few road races together. I willingly joined him in his journey, even if I didn’t want to.
But I liked bikes before this time. I liked the freedom to ride around the neighborhood, to escape and explore, and to be my own person. To confront my fears and overcome them. To fall and have scars that I can learn from.
I was 23 when I got my fourth scar, I broke my wrist on a cyclocross bike.
I was 21 when I got my third scar, I broke my collarbone on a road bike.
I was 16 when I got my second scar, I broke my arm on a mountain bike.
But my first scar is my most meaningful, on my knee when I was seven years old.
In 1998, I learned to ride on a pink sparkle bike.
It was during that summer for a family gathering at my cousin’s house in New York. I fell, scraped my knee, and cried for the rest of the night. The entire family encouraged me to try again the next day. They pushed me down the hill on their street, and I found my balance.
It was the first time I believed I could do something hard for myself.
am i climbing alone?
In 2021, I completed an Everesting on a green sparkle bike.
That means climbing the same hill over and over again until I accumulate 29,000 feet in elevation gain, the height of Mt. Everest. But I wanted to instead do 30,000 feet on my birthday, to celebrate turning 30 years old.
This was a trendy challenge in the endurance community at the time, and I figured it would be perfect training for Mt. Washington in a few weeks. My birthday was on a Tuesday, so I took the day off work and planned to return the day after like it wasn’t a big deal to me.
I’m incredibly proud of this achievement, but I had to layer more meaning onto something that is already meaningful, in the way I frustratingly tend to do.
I thought Everesting would be a good excuse to raise money for my client’s arts foundation. I didn’t need to do this challenge on a gravel trail, but I told myself if I hit a certain donation amount, I would.
I raised more money and attention than I expected, so I made an already difficult thing harder, for no real reason except to hold myself to my word.
That instinct, to carry more than what’s asked, is something I’ve learned growing up in a Filipino household. If I were to do something for myself, I need to make sure to balance that with doing things for other.
It meant doing extra work without being asked and finding dignity in the sacrifice. It meant that strength is about stubbornly doing this on my own, in the way that has gotten me this far.
I can’t take for granted the love that my community had for me. I had conversations with people who had done an Everesting before — who shared their strategy, their motivations. Their voices carried me though that day. I had friends ride multiple laps with me in the morning before work. Even strangers cheered me on. The miles, the elevation, the time flew by when I was with them.
When 10am came around and I was riding by myself, I fell back into my old ways. I was alone in the 80 degree sunlight, playing Bo Burnham’s 30 on repeat to keep myself pedaling. For the next few hours, my pace dropped significantly. I was focusing only on effort. I was choosing not to eat. I was choosing not to drink.
A little over halfway at the top of lap 24, I was depleted, and I thought about giving up. I was about 60 miles in and 16,000 feet deep. I had another 23 laps to go. At the bottom of that lap’s descent, I got off my bike, laid down in the dirt under a patch of bushes and closed my eyes.
I fell asleep.
When I woke up, Jenna was there to hand me some pork buns from my favorite dim sum restaurant in San Francisco. My dad, who had flown in from New Hampshire just for this, passed me an open Coke.
For that hour I was with them, I gave up. They helped allow me to give up. I let them take care of me — to feed me, to talk to me, to sit in silence with me. They were here just for me.
As the heat was lifting and the fog started to roll in, they helped me back on the bike. To do one more lap. Then two more laps. Then one more after that.
And as the work day came to an end, my community began to return. With each lap’s descent, I’d see more friends appear around the bend. It felt like a kind of magic. As I started to focus on the surrender of the descent, and not just the effort of the climb, all the numbers began to fly by again.
Maybe climbing was teaching me how to be loved.
where to go from the top?
I open my eyes.
I don’t know where I am in the race, but I know I’m close to the finish. I’ve been ahead of all my time splits so far, but I refuse to look ahead. Just this moment. Just this mile. Just this breath.
My Garmin beeps. One last lap marker. I don’t want to take the final gel, but I squeeze it down anyway. A small act of self care.
My breathing in rhythm. My legs in motion. The pain was familiar. Steady. Almost comforting. My body was doing what it was trained to do. I didn’t need to force it. I just needed to trust it. The rider ahead is within reach, but passing him isn’t the point today. I’m already winning.
I close my eyes again.
Earlier that week, I had considered not racing at all.
My Lola closed her eyes for the last time. Her birthday was the same week as this climb, she would’ve turned 91.
This one hour goal felt small. Trivial. Mechanical. Another performance in a life full of effort. I didn’t want to live a life where I try to accomplish as much as I can before I die. This year reflected that. I trained less. I prioritized recovery. I weighed more. I remembered to eat. I thought less. I felt more.
It reminded me what was at the top of my checklist this morning. My goal for this race: “To just be.”
I open my eyes for the last time as I gently release my grip on the handlebars. I can see the crowd swelling near the top. I’m maybe three minutes away. I flip my Garmin screen to see my elapsed time.
54 minutes. I’m going to make it.
A quiet, full-body exhale.
learning to descend.
It didn’t take long for the moment to pass, and for my dad to mention, “If you tried, I think you could have come in 3rd!”
I smiled. I was a handful of seconds away from it. But this time I knew that it isn’t my goal to podium.
Although the Mt. Washington time goal was not mine, I feel the gap left by it. Not an emptiness, exactly, but a spaciousness. It’s like I’m coming down from over a decade of effort. Like I’m descending Mt. Washington for the first time.
A whole decade of riding, racing, trying, proving. And now I’m seeing what’s left when I stop climbing. When I allow myself to coast. When I’m not gripping so tightly to the bars.
In my last month as a 33 year old, I’ve been looking for a new goal, a new climb to ascend. As I’ve been exploring and writing more, I came up with a helpful way of framing my motivations:
Selfish + My Beliefs? Growth, but it can become isolating.
Selfless + My Beliefs? Service, but it can become draining.
Selfish + Selfless? Performative, trying to help while trying to be seen.
In the rare moment when selfish wants, selfless actions, and deeply held beliefs overlap? I think that’s Integrity. Not a fixed identity, but a brief moment of clarity. A flash where the climb, the people, the purpose — it all lines up.
It has me thinking about how much of this comes from growing up Filipino American. These values are easily tangled and can be full of contradictions. At times, actions can appear Performative. But these Beliefs made sense if they are lived with intention. Growth wasn’t loud. Service was expected.
Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Maybe that’s why the descent means so much to me now. As I descend more — in age, in ambition, in urgency — the more I understand: Integrity isn’t just built on effort. It can reveal itself in the ease. That giving up is how I might climb again.
Thank you for reading. Maybe there’s something here that helps you — I care deeply.
-Pips