Worrying about the "right" things?

Today's route was described as hilly, finishing with a ten mile uphill climb and then fifteen mile descent. All day long we talked about the upcoming ten mile climb. Even as we encountered steep hill after steep hill, we talked about the challenge of the ten mile climb.

We finally reached the ten mile climb, wrung out from all the hills we'd climbed earlier. As we proceeded upward we found that it wasn't that steep at all. Then it occurrs to us that a ten mile climb couldn't be all that steep or else it would climb into the stratosphere. We'd spent all day long fussing over the last big hill only to find that it wasn't the horror we'd expected.

On the other hand, the fifteen mile descent had a ferocious headwind. Rather than being the "piece of cake" we'd anticipated, the downhill required steady effort. Funny how at the end of the day we'd spent so much energy worrying about all the wrong things. We would have saved our energy if we'd just not worried and fretted about any of them.