Agree with the above. Weirdly enough, cycling is all about riding hills. I would say that most folks who come to cycling avoid hills at all costs, well, because hills are obviously hard to ride up. But as Dick says, that's the whole point. When I restarted riding at 50, the first thing I did was attempt to ride the 500 vertical feet up to a local mall, not that I wanted to buy anything, it was just a convenient hill. My HR went through the roof and my legs hurt. Perfect. Took me a couple months of attempts to finally be able to ride the whole way up there, even though it was only 7 miles. So that's what you do. BTW, none of the roads up to that mall have shoulders. And there is a MUP that goes up there too, but I chose to ride on the road because I knew that roads go everywhere and MUPS go basically nowhere. So one might as well get comfortable on the road.
The other thing which bothers new riders are cars. There's a fear of riding on the road, which makes folks drive to some MUP with their bike on the back of the car. My experience of riding for almost 30 years on the road and MUPS is that roads are safer than MUPS. What you do to ride on the road is have a helmet mirror, at least a 200 lumen red flasher on the back and a 200 lumen white flasher on the front, plus wear a highly visible jersey or jacket.. You want a driver to be able to see you a mile away in daylight. MUPS commonly feature dogs on long leashes and families who think a MUP is like their driveway, when really it's more like a freeway. Drivers are much more aware of what's going on than are people on MUPS. One of my riding buddies was badly injured when a runner with earbuds (they all have ear buds now) did a 180 right in front of him. That person would never have done that on a road. That said, do try to choose low traffic roads and notice right turn signals on cars which pass you..
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