Kicking butt in bicycling

Time for a positive post! I've been pretty down lately due to my weight-loss and state of my life, but there is some good that I haven't shared yet.

I road biked up a mountain last week! This mountain to be exact:

That's never happened before. I know I've been getting thinner and thus faster (I'm consistently keeping a 17+ mph pace over 20+ miles, which I haven't been able to do before), but I didn't think I could make it up an honest-to-goodness mountain without passing out.

I used to be so scared of anything that was steep and continued uphill for more than a mile, but somehow I talked myself into it and I made it to the top! Hooooooolla!

Here's the elevation profile:

In case you can't see the scale because the type is super small, that's 6.5 miles of climbing over 1700 vertical feet which comes out to an average grade of 5.5%. And I made it to the top without falling over because I was going too slowly! (By the way, I can go as slow as 2.5 mph before that happens. How do I know? Because it's happened going up a small "mountain".) In fact, I kept a respectable 6.4 mph average. Not fast by any means, but fast for my big butt going up a MOUNTAIN.

And since I was able to do this and didn't suffer too much (as in, I wanted to do it again in the future) I looked into mountains closer to where I live. I found one that's about the same difficulty and distance. I'm still pretty terrified because big girls like me aren't supposed to make it up mountains like that, but since I did it once I think I can do it again.

Scratch that. I WILL do it again.

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ETA: I make the "road biked up a mountain" distinction here because I have mountain biked up a mountain before. Several times, in fact. However, I had to stop numerous times during those rides and oftentimes I ended up walking uphill part of the trail. So this is definitely a new accomplishment.