Aims and aspirations for 2024

[Jon in Sweden]

Nice to read about everyone else's hopes and aspirations for next year. Keep them coming!

My 2023 (in terms of cycling) is complete. A few, well earned days off now.

[Pebble]

14000 exactly ?
did you meticulously plan your last ride of the year or did you have to get off and carry the last few miles?

---------------------------

Looking back at a post of mine from the beginning of the year my target for 2023 was 6500 (125 a week) . However, and I don't know when or why, that must have changed to 6000. which I proudly achieved early december with 6047 miles (6081 on the milometer) Have not been on the bike for over two weeks, its fantastic. eating and drinking is much more fun.

as for 2024 - 5,000 miles is the goal (i'm getting older!)

[Jon in Sweden]

14000 exactly ?
did you meticulously plan your last ride of the year or did you have to get off and carry the last few miles?

Meticulously planned

My ride options are somewhat limited on the road bike on normal tyres at the moment due to all roads except the main roads having ice, so it was a sort of 'out and back' ride. Albeit, the point at which I turned was a junction.

This was the final ride:



I actually did two rides yesterday, but the first one was incredibly slow and tough with lots of fresh snow. The evenings ride was only 2 minutes longer, but I covered an extra 30km.

[PT1029]

I don't normally think about aims/objectives and just bumble along, the wife always has a period of self re reflexion/analysis at the end of the year.
For 2024,
Do more camping (me only, she isn't that keen on it).
Have a non camping cycling holiday together that she looks forward to AND says she enjoyed afterwards (not always the case (the after bit), even when the trip was planned together(!).
Get to grips more with electronic navigation.
Having had the go ahead from next door, finish destroying next doors fig tree just over the fence - it is a bit of a triffid.

[Cugel]

I don't normally think about aims/objectives and just bumble along, the wife always has a period of self re reflexion/analysis at the end of the year.
For 2024,
(snip)
Having had the go ahead from next door, finish destroying next doors fig tree just over the fence - it is a bit of a triffid.

Have they got that fig to walk about doing-in humans, your next door? (Perhaps they are Evil Botanists). I have a fig at the bottom of the garden which, although bitten by Jack Frost each winter, revives and thrives over spring & summer. I would dearly like to train it to walk about doing a triffid!

Mind, there's hardly any humans (relatively speaking) in Ceredigion, so I'd have to take it to that London or it might get bored and come after me. Also, the fig belongs to the ladywife, as the garden is her domain. She might have a reflexive moment and set it on me whilst contemplating the balance of my virtues & vices (from a ladywife perspective - I have no virtues from anyone else's point of view).

I wonder - can the average 3/4 of a century old cyclist outsprint a triffid? There's only one way to find out.

[Slowroad]

Getting through the next few dark months! Would be good to maintain or improve fitness even if I don't get back to the level I was at after a week on a fully-loaded 3-speed Brompton this September...
I'd really like to go cycle camping abroad again, haven't been since 2019. So will do some planning and maybe even booking. Nothing too ambitious, just France and/or the Netherlands and Belgium. I suspect if I don't get away in 2024 it's just going to get more and more difficult.
Will also half plan some closer trips in case circumstances mean I can't get away yet again.
Would also be good to get out cycling with other people again.

[Pinhead]

To live to 2025

[Wipperman_95]

To get back on the bike - I haven't ridden since 5th Sept, then had Covid, and later in November 'flu' and hadn't had the 'flu' jab, so was wiped out.
However, after reading a few Lost Lanes, I'm no longer chasing performance, and will try to 'slow ride' more often.....I'll start by selling my current bike, and looking for a steel framed bargain.....

[SimonCelsa]

To maintain a higher annual mileage by bicycle over car, this year about 5300' vs 3000' so all good.

To get the fair weather fixed gear Raleigh Record Ace below 20lbs / 9kg. I've swapped the Brooks for a Charge Spoon but will probably also need a lighter set of wheels.

Not really asking a lot but I'm easily pleased!

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[SwiftyDoesIt]

My solstice intentions regards cycling are to:

Complete the Sabbath September as a light/fast touring/audax machine and do a shake down ride/trip up to Scotland for 3 days to visit a friend. It's an indulgance as I already have a brilliant do-it-all touring/utility/audax but it was an impulse buy just for the frame and as I can fit a measured 31.5mm tyre underneath guards - a 28 that fills out on the H+Son TB14s, it's going to be precisly what I want, I can't wait!

Decide which of the retro bikes I'm going to let go, looks like it'll be two as I haven't ridden them for a few years

To complete a 150 mile 'day' ride - though likely I'll ride through the night to avoid most of the motor traffic.

to see how fast I can ride a '10', never done a TT, and I've no interest in having to deal with all the faff and complication of a TT event (bike clubs aren't something I've ever wanted to be involved in either), I don't own a TT bike, just a decent carbon racer from about 10 years back with some higher end goodies on it which look bling but won't make me perceptibly any faster
I found a route that looks nice, isn't too much up and down and traffic should be fairly light, if I average 20mph I'll be absolutely over the moon

That'll do for one year

[Cugel]

My solstice intentions regards cycling are to:

Complete the Sabbath September as a light/fast touring/audax machine and do a shake down ride/trip up to Scotland for 3 days to visit a friend. It's an indulgance as I already have a brilliant do-it-all touring/utility/audax but it was an impulse buy just for the frame and as I can fit a measured 31.5mm tyre underneath guards - a 28 that fills out on the H+Son TB14s, it's going to be precisly what I want, I can't wait!

Decide which of the retro bikes I'm going to let go, looks like it'll be two as I haven't ridden them for a few years

To complete a 150 mile 'day' ride - though likely I'll ride through the night to avoid most of the motor traffic.

to see how fast I can ride a '10', never done a TT, and I've no interest in having to deal with all the faff and complication of a TT event (bike clubs aren't something I've ever wanted to be involved in either), I don't own a TT bike, just a decent carbon racer from about 10 years back with some higher end goodies on it which look bling but won't make me perceptibly any faster
I found a route that looks nice, isn't too much up and down and traffic should be fairly light, if I average 20mph I'll be absolutely over the moon

That'll do for one year

About the TT ..... you might be surprised to learn that doing a TT within an organised club-style event will bring more out of you than doing it "in private". It's the nature of humans to feel obliged to try harder when others are observing them. Well, assuming the human isn't completely solipsistic.

Personally I only ever did TTs as part of an effort to get better at road racing. A TT is a rather boring activity unless one is an obsessive about beating some other rider by 2 seconds, even if it is done by cheating with a funny helmet and a £10,000 special bike.

[SwiftyDoesIt]

My solstice intentions regards cycling are to:

to see how fast I can ride a '10', never done a TT, and I've no interest in having to deal with all the faff and complication of a TT event (bike clubs aren't something I've ever wanted to be involved in either), I don't own a TT bike, just a decent carbon racer from about 10 years back with some higher end goodies on it which look bling but won't make me perceptibly any faster
I found a route that looks nice, isn't too much up and down and traffic should be fairly light, if I average 20mph I'll be absolutely over the moon

That'll do for one year

About the TT ..... you might be surprised to learn that doing a TT within an organised club-style event will bring more out of you than doing it "in private". It's the nature of humans to feel obliged to try harder when others are observing them. Well, assuming the human isn't completely solipsistic.

Personally I only ever did TTs as part of an effort to get better at road racing. A TT is a rather boring activity unless one is an obsessive about beating some other rider by 2 seconds, even if it is done by cheating with a funny helmet and a £10,000 special bike.

I'm honestly not that bothered to max out* so all the other stuff that's involved - admin/arrival/time slot/helmets (probably enforced by most clubs, which I simply won't ever do), is easily enough for me not to want to bother.

I can rock up any time I want on any day (even in winter) and even stop halfway through if I just don't fancy it.
When I was about 15/16, I used to try beat my 'record' to the junction to the main A road and then have a nice trundle back, IIRC it was about 7 miles or so, quite flat (just checked on bikehike and 88ft ascent) but quite a winding road in the sticks part but big housing estate roads for the first 2 miles or so.That was the mid 80s.

The route I found local to me is 108ft (over 10) with one rbt to navigate for the return leg. Given where I am is a bit up and down with hardly any flat profile I can't think of anywhere else I could get that within 20 miles and that's too much effort to find proper pan flat

*I've done that in the long distant past of falling on the ground semi conscious and/or throwing up in other disciplines like rowing, rugby, running, weights

[Jon in Sweden]

My aspirations for 2024 are:

* cover 16,000km, again 50% gravel
* complete Vätternrundan at 35kph
* run three successful gravel tours for a UK gravel cycling holiday company
* do some promotion of the gravel cycling here with social media influencers from the UK
* increase my FTP to 370w
* somehow find time for a cycling holiday. Most likely outside of summer. Maybe October in the Sierra Nevada.
* continue enjoying myself!

We're more than half way through 2024 now - how are everyone's aims and aspirations coming on? I'll update things from my end:

16,000km target: this will be no issue. It'll be over 10,000km by the end of this month and it's been mostly gravel lately.

Vätternrundan: the friends I rode with were unfortunately a little slow so I had to hop around between groups. There was a real lack of faster groups on my start time, so my average speed was 34.4kph for the 315km. My aim next year is to join a proper, organised squad and achieve 40kph. This is entirely doable.

Gravel tours: they went well. We had 68 cyclists from the UK, only two of whom had ever visited the Swedish countryside. Everyone loved it.

Gravel promotion: we had Alex Dowsett here for a week in May with his family. They had a great time.

FTP: it's over 400w now. Not exactly sure how much over, but maybe 410-415w. I'm just back from Norway - my biggest climbs (done on concurrent days) were 68 minutes at 387w and 45 minutes at 403w. Those two days were directly after a 160km gravel ride with 2700m of climbing, and part of a period of 12 days where I averaged over 100km a day.

The main issue is that I can only really push out that sort of power going uphill. I need something to push against In a time trial situation, I struggle to get anywhere near those numbers. That is definitely something to work on for 2025!

Holidays: I'm just back from a week in Norway. It was just fantastic.

And I'm definitely enjoying myself.

[Jon in Sweden]

Going to add another goal for the year end.

I'm quite close to being able to do nearly an hour at 40kph on an out and back course (so not exclusively tailwind assisted). The loop I have is just over 36km and I did it at 38.3kph yesterday. I will try to get to 40kph for that route by the end of the year.