A Google query of “Cycling Goals 2025” just now brought up the following:
- What is your 2025 cycling goal? on Reddit . r/cycling
- What are your cycling goals for 2025? on weightweenies.starbike.com
- Set your cycle commuting goals for 2025 on cycle scheme.co.uk
- How to Set a Goal in 2025 that feels GOOD on http://www.sascy.com
- New Year, New Rides: Setting smart cycling goals for 2025 on welovecycling.com
Then there are the YouTube videos:
- My CRAZY Cycling Goals for 2025? – New Year’s Q&A
- What are your cycling goals for 2025?
- Unpacking my cycling goals for 2025
Contrary to these, the YouTube video that reflects my attitude toward cycling goals today is titled No Cycling Goals This Year – And It Feels Great!
When I started cycling on a road bike in 2010, my goal was simple. Keep up with the much more experienced group of roadies I joined! That goal quickly changed to surviving the longer and longer rides I was roped into. I remember feeling thoroughly trashed during the last 20 km of the 98.4 km Gator Ride in March 2010. That was not quite my first metric-century ride. I didn’t have the energy to pedal another 1.6 km to make it a 100 km ride.
My first ride further than 100 km was almost an Imperial century. As with the Gator Ride, I didn’t have the energy to cover another 3.9 km to turn the 156.1 km Space Race in April 2010 into a 160 km ride.
It wasn’t until 2012 that I completed a 160 km ride. Under a cold and grey early spring sky in South Holland.
Things snowballed from there. I did progressively longer and longer rides. My first annual cycling goal was to ride 10,000 km in 2015. I increased that to 12,000 km in 2016 and 15,000 km in 2017.
Turning 60 at the end of 2017, along with the occasional medical issue and what life throws at you in general, coincides with an ongoing reduction in my annual distances. I rode 12,000 km in 2018 and 10,000 km in 2019, and the number has continued to fall. These days, I am pleased to ride 5,000 km in a year. Chasing kilometres has been replaced by rides to that day’s breakfast place.
This makes my non-cycling goal to weigh less at the end of 2025 than I do now particularly challenging!
Old Roots, New Routes 