Once More Round the Sun: on resetting year-end goals, motivation, and delight

In 2023, I rode 3,000 miles on my bike. During that year, I trained for my first imperial century (100 miles) with friends, putting in many looooooong rides alone and with others as well as my usual shorter 10-20 mile rides. I explored new places by bike (New Orleans LA, Pensacola Beach FL, Eugene OR, Washington D.C., the Tunnel Hill Trail in southern IL, Central Park in NYC) and wore treads in familiar pavement (northern Michigan, St. Louis metro area and the Madison County trail-to-trail system in my home area of Illinois, Edenton NC). I rode in winter. I rode in spring. I rode in summer–the century was on a day with temps approaching 100 Fahrenheit. That 3,000 mile goal for the year? I came up with that halfway through the year, after the century, when I saw how far I’d gone already. I rode in Fall, and again into the winter. I gathered friends for the last 30+ miles of my 3,000 on New Year’s Eve of 2023, and another friend came out with cowbells to surprise-cheer us on as we rounded the last loop of trail.

So, I went into 2024 feeling great. I put my bike in the shop for a much needed tune-up I hadn’t been able to give it because I couldn’t afford to take time off from riding to make my goal. And, I basically did the same thing with my body. For a week and a half in January of 2024, I hardly rode at all. It was glorious, just as all those rides had been.

And then, I got my bike back. And I thought, I can probably do 3,000 miles again in 2024. I had plans to ride a century again. We did some training. But it didn’t work out the way it had in 2023. I had some injuries. I had work stuff. I got tired. And the group training rides turned out to have been important motivation for longer rides in a way I had not quite realized. My schedule–work and play both–made it harder and harder to find long uninterrupted periods of time for the long rides that had made 3,000 miles achievable, and that also made another century unachievable.

By mid-summer 2024, I was nowhere near halfway to 3,000. But I was halfway to 2,500. So I downshifted my goal. And it felt… fine? Not just fine, good. Like a way of being good to myself and still staying motivated. I switched to more smaller rides, only occasionally doing 20+ miles at a shot and very rarely doing 30+. Something about knowing that I COULD do more took the pressure off on continuing that same level and style of riding.

I led more social group bike rides, and did test rides for each one. I still did exploratory rides when I returned to Pensacola Beach and New Orleans on family trips. Onto the back end of paved trail rides in my neck of the woods near Edwardsville IL on the MCT trails, I started tacking a few miles exploring the streets of my own hometown the same way I had explored other cities, the same way I have become intimately familiar with the streets of nearby St. Louis. I delighted in bikes, alone and with other folks. Sustainably, and I confess joyfully, I kept heading for that 2,500 miles.

A smattering my 2024 rides: exploring off the Katy Trail only to find this graffiti-covered tunnel, along Bayou St. John in New Orleans LA with my husband Bert, obligatory bike portrait along the route down Pensacola Beach to Navarre Beach FL along the ocean dunes on a solo ride, another solo ride pic on a bridge overlooking some kayakers on the Boardman River in downtown Traverse City MI, at the front of my Friday night bike ride on a night I was leading, and my bike and my son’s bike on a boardwalk through the woods near a creek on Leelenau Peninsula MI.

That goal reduction also gave me time to “lose” a week of riding to work travel, another week and a bit to American Thanksgiving travel, and most of a week at the end of Fall semester as I wrapped up classes and grades in mid-December. A stretch of autumnal weather in late December meant that I actually finished my final ride of the year, putting myself over the top of my 2,500 mile goal, scouting a route for a social bike ride, noodling around St. Louis, on December 30, an entire day early. Woo hoo!

When Sam asked whether I’d like to write a piece about this, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. I don’t want to brag, though I am proud. And pride in some senses–look what hot shit I am, and y’all are not–is a vice, but in other senses–I am not ashamed, I did something hard well and I know it–is a virtue. If you’ll forgive me a bit of philosophy, I really do think Aristotle had it right: virtue is the golden mean, the moderate position between excess and deficiency of that same trait. The healthy pride I think I feel avoids the deficient position of shame, and the excessive position of arrogance. So, what am I proud OF?

I’m proud of sticking with it. I’m proud of taking breaks. I’m proud of mixing ride types. I’m proud of flexing when and how and with whom I ride. I’m proud of making sure I take pleasure in my rides, of enjoying making my own wind, of riding in all manner of weather, of taking care of my equipment when I have the skills and of asking for help when I don’t. I’m proud of riding alone, riding with my spouse, riding with my kid, riding with my friends, making new friends through social cycling. I’m proud of making space for others to enjoy riding, through inviting people to ride with me or being the person who shows up to make riding feel fun and safe for someone else and especially for inviting people to share the way riding feels to me by planning group rides with lovely miles and loads of alleys and fun little cut-throughs and secret ways and pleasant or even amazing ride stops. To be honest, I’ve got a little bit of meta-pride that is especially the point of this blog entry though not the only point: I am proud that I lowered my annual goal rather than continuing to set a goal I could not meet in a balanced and flourishing way. I’d have found myself wanting. By setting a goal that fit me and aiming for 2,500 miles, it was enough to motivate me to keep getting out, to reward me for continuing to get out, to give me slack for other commitments, to be good to myself and others in so many ways. I still met a goal that I set. And I that had re-set for very good reasons.

My workplace has a mantra: continuous improvement. This has some value, like goal-setting generally. But it goes awry when folks interpret it to mean that we need continuous improvement on every metric simultaneously. That way lies burnout (ask me how I know). Continuous improvement isn’t met by just one metric, shooting ever higher. Sometimes it’s met by lowering some metrics and balancing them against others.

And I guess these are the two points I want to make with this blog entry:

1. Continuous improvement sometimes means LOWERING some goals and still meeting them; it doesn’t just mean more more more.
2. You can be proud of meeting lowered goals when you lowered them for good reasons, and have a better life doing so than just chasing a goal per se.

In 2023, I did things I’ve never done before: first ride over 40 miles, first ride over 50 miles, first ride over… all the way up to first 100 miles in a day, and first time riding 3,000 miles in a year. In 2024, I set goals and revised them. And as you can see from the images above, I had a helluva good time doing so. This didn’t mean abandoning goals. I still pursued them. And I pursued them joyously as well as intentionally. Did I meet all goals for the year? No. But I met this one. And I met it because I was willing to re-set. That’s not giving up.

Every one of my 2,500 miles was a joy. Who knows what next year holds? Or whether I will want to keep setting yearly mileage goals. My century-ride group is starting training for a metric century (100 km; 62 miles) in two weeks. I’ll probably make that. Heck, I might make 2,500 again, or 3,000, by December 31. Honestly, my most immediate goal is remembering to write “2025” on all my documents!

The thing is, I genuinely believe goals are for flourishing, not for mere setting and achieving. This 2,500-mile goal, and its re-set down from 3,000, was part of what made 2024 a Good Year for me. Present Alison has learned this. I hope Future Alison remembers it.

And if you’re ever in St. Louis on a Friday night, I’ll show you how much fun riding can be.

Alison has written a few times for this blog on cycling, and group rides in particular, under a different author account by the same name. You can find some of her previous entries as a guest blogger by searching her name on the site. Her previous work as a regular blogger here is at https://fitisafeministissue.com/author/alisonreiheld/. She is a philosopher, bioethicist, mother, daughter, caregiver, hiker, cyclist, activist when she’s got the spoons, sometime poet, and general fan of being alive.