I’ve never seen The Hills Have Eyes. But last Saturday, I wished the hills did have eyes, because my friend Terry and I kicked some hilly, cycling ass. It’s a particular boost to the psyche because the last climbing segment we did wasn’t planned.

Poster for The Hills Have Eyes (1977), directed by Wes Craven

It has been a strange cycling season so far. More erratic and grueling than any I have experienced before.

I’ve never been a chipper, chatty girl in the morning. I’m silent and fuzzy-headed and sluggish. Getting up and out on the road early—decidely not what my body and mind are naturally inclined to do. It’s been harder this year to rise early. And more necessary than ever. On our most frequent weekend ride up to Nyack and back—about a 70-mile run round trip from my place in Brooklyn—any time after about 11am on a sunny day is brutally hot, and the roads don’t have much shade. So my friends and I have been trying to meet up earlier to beat the heat. Just the business of getting my ass up and out of bed at 5:30 or 6 each Saturday has felt like its own special hurdle. It’s been a grind.

It’s been so scorching, even leaving early doesn’t let us avoid the heat entirely. The 105-degree heat a few weeks ago knocked me out; I even cut my ride short, stopping in Piermont instead of Nyack. I felt exhausted. Slow. Heavy.

And then all week before this past Saturday’s ride, I was plagued each morning with a tightness in my chest and an irritating, sporadic cough that never quite subsided all day. I thought it was some low-grade version of the cold/flu nastiness floating around my office at first. By Wednesday, I was still feeling crappy, and someone suggested to me that it might be mild asthma. Which I have never had, but it runs in my family and scares the crap out of me. Decades of my grandmother’s wheezing and choking come to mind with the mere mention of the word.

So I was approaching last Saturday’s ride with some apprehension. When I woke up though, after I shook off the initial lethargy and rode out, to my surprise, I felt okay. Better than I have in weeks. My chest—almost normal again. I met up with Terry at the Palisades Park entrance, and we were at The Runcible Spoon in Nyack by 10. You know it’s been a steamy summer when the temp on River Road in Jersey is pushing 90, and you feel like it’s positively cool and breezy compared to every other day during the past two weeks.

We both felt so good at Mile 34, often the halfway marker, I floated the idea of pushing it. Rockland Lake State Park is only another three miles or so away. But at least half of it is all uphill, which is why it’s not always part of the regular weekend run. The last mile down to the lake is a glorious downhill reward, but that also means you have to climb back up that same stretch going back. Because the thought of that nasty hill back right after making the climb to the lake makes me cringe, I usually like to do a loop around the lake before turning around.

All this to say: What looks like a tiny five- to six-mile supplement, which would take maybe 15 to 20 minutes if it were flat, ends up being 40 minutes of alternating cycling heaven and cycling hell.

At various points en route, I was bumping up against how excruciatingly slow I felt, crawling up each hill. It feels endless. Like a bad idea someone else must have duped you into. It wasn’t until I was back in the Palisades heading south,  feeling that giddiness that comes when I know I’m only 14 miles from home, nearly all of them pretty pancake flat that I remembered: when I got up that morning, I didn’t know if I’d even make it the first 15 miles to New Jersey. I reminded myself of that on and off the rest of the way home.

I had had delusions of cycling grandeur for Sunday. I haven’t done back-to-back weekend rides yet this season, and it’s already late July. Eeek. Two years ago, by this point in the season, I had done several back-to-backs and a century ride. The spontaneous Rockland trip was a good idea, and it was wise to take advantage of the slight let-up in the weather. It also was the reason I slept like a fairy-tale character Sunday morning and didn’t ride at all. I sat on my ass, lazed, and went to the movies, where I sat on my ass some more, surrounded by icy central air.

Endurance through more days commuting by bike to work,  and, hopefully, some back-to-backs: next week.

I finally officially signed up for Braking the Cycle 2012 this week. This will be my fifth AIDS bike ride, my fourth since 2008.

I don’t always look this serious when I cycle.

This year’s Braking the Cycle will benefit the services of Housing Works, a grassroots AIDS organization that has been devoted to building a healing community for people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS since its founding in 1990. Its services for homeless, formerly homeless, and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS include housing, primary care, dental care, mental health services, case management, transgender health services, job training, wellness programs, and more.

I ride my bike because cycling makes me feel free and grounded at the same time. What is freedom if it’s not zooming down the road at nearly 40 miles an hour on The Blue Streak, the bike I bought in June 2008? And what could be more earth-bound than listening to the grind and click of its chain and its gears as I drag myself up a steep hill, the excruciatingly slow rhythm of the tires peeling over the asphalt with each pedal rotation?

I ride my bike to raise money for AIDS/HIV services because HIV is still here. I remember a world without AIDS, but that was over 30 years ago. People still live with HIV, and people still die from it. I ride because I’m blessed with good health, and I can ride. I’ll stop riding for organizations that serve those who battle with and against HIV when the fight is over.

When I bought my first road bike in 2008—the first bike of my own I’d had since the age of 10—I had never ridden more than 85 miles in a day, and I had never done back-to-back endurance rides. I purchased an odometer after I’d been riding my new bike about a month. At the time I mostly wanted to get a better sense of how fast I was going and how many miles I’d ridden on a given training day. The odometer also tracks the total number of miles you’ve ridden. As of this writing, it’s at 8,154 miles. That’s roughly the distance between New York City and Mumbai in India. I’ve never been to India, but it’s mind-boggling and reassuring to think that if there were enough land between here and there, I could bike there.

By the time September rolls around, the odometer will be somewhere around 9,000 miles. In the months between now and then, I will be training—riding 60, 70, 80 miles on Saturdays and Sundays every weekend, riding to and from work, riding riding riding.  It was over 100 degrees when I rode two Saturdays ago. I rode anyway.

I’ll also be fundraising all summer long. Here’s where you can donate to support my efforts: Mika’s Braking the Cycle 2012 Donation page.

This blog is where I’ll be posting periodically all summer to chart my progress.