What worked for you in 2025?

Jeremy

Jeremy

JORBA:Nassau
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I get a lot of ideas and inspiration from this place. Just hearing people thoughts sometimes triggers something in me to do myself. So I thought this would be a nice positive thread in that same spirit.

If I had to only pick one, the one thing that had the biggest positive impact last year was getting a legit bike fit. I saw Tim at Fitfirst, and spent almost 4 hours getting fit on my road and XC bike. He really changed the way i sit and made huge improvement in my comfort during longer rides. I am lower and more far forward and its made me faster.

What about y’all???
 
I would say I have my best ever year jumping my bike....and no, thats not impressing many people...including my 11 year old. However, it was one of the more trying things I have had to work thru mentally. Less that I learned something new, more that I worked on getting out of my head.
 
I like this thread idea. For me it begs the question, what were you trying to do? Like for Walter and you (you the OP), the "do" was probably different.

What was I trying to do? I was trying to hurt less. To that end I have started PT and continued to refine my nightly stretching routine. These 2 things have made a world of improvement in various ways - both hip & knee issues. Those improvements will hopefully roll into a different answer for next year.

I'm a few years older but I cannot stress the persistence of daily stretching.
 
For me it's really a combination of 3 things but they are all related. Main goal was just to ride more.

Signing up for Monkey Knife Fight 2025 gave me a big push early on to keep riding. So, in simplest terms it was setting an early year goal that pushed me forward. As a result, I began riding more consistently with other people. You may recall the dismal spring weather that lasted into May. Without the motivation of meeting someone else to ride, I'm certain that 95% of those gloomy day rides wouldn't have happened. Part 3 was buying a new gravel bike. Yes you can ride bedminster on 25s with rim brakes, but it's going to be more enjoyable on a gravel bike especially when you're trying to keep up with the rest of the group, and that becomes part of your regular riding.

Now that I've written it all out, I think riding with others had the biggest impact overall. It helps the motivation on those days where I'd otherwise roll over and turn off the alarm. I'm still doing it now 1+ year later and I don't have any plans to stop.
 
Red Mosquito said:
For me it's really a combination of 3 things but they are all related. Main goal was just to ride more.

Signing up for Monkey Knife Fight 2025 gave me a big push early on to keep riding. So, in simplest terms it was setting an early year goal that pushed me forward. As a result, I began riding more consistently with other people. You may recall the dismal spring weather that lasted into May. Without the motivation of meeting someone else to ride, I'm certain that 95% of those gloomy day rides wouldn't have happened. Part 3 was buying a new gravel bike. Yes you can ride bedminster on 25s with rim brakes, but it's going to be more enjoyable on a gravel bike especially when you're trying to keep up with the rest of the group, and that becomes part of your regular riding.

Now that I've written it all out, I think riding with others had the biggest impact overall. It helps the motivation on those days where I'd otherwise roll over and turn off the alarm. I'm still doing it now 1+ year later and I don't have any plans to stop.
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I second all of this. And blame @Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST for making me buy a gravel bike and sign up for MKF last year. But this got me riding 400% more so I can't complain
 
2025 was a challenging year, my wife had two major surgeries in April and Oct, which made me shift my daily routine as she was not able to drive for 3 months. It was the lowest consecutive hours months I have had in probably 13 years with April, May, June and July averaging below 35 hours a month. Even though I don't really have hours goals anymore, when you are at 45-60 it just kinda becomes your routine. I also wasn't in the same mindset because of those surgeries, which was neither good nor bad.

But two different things came out of that, I increased TM starting in May and had way more TM hours than the last few year, at least felt that way as I don't really track them. With the storms this year I cleared somewhere between 75-100 trees between Baldpate, Waco and Nesh. I honestly lost count but had 50 by April and it never slowed. Did 3 reroutes at waco as a result of HUGE trees coming down.

I was motivated in the ber months and ended up doing 76 hours in September, which is a new high for me. I also did 3 hours on Oct 1st, so 79 hours in 31, where my previous 31 today was 72. I don't know what that means but it happened.
 
What worked for me as a peri-menopausal woman - after listening to Outlive by Peter Atilla I focused on the following (mostly in the second half of the year): 7-8 hours of quality sleep, moving my body in some way every day, lifting heavier weights, and trying to meet my daily protein goals.
 
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Realizing I need set goals. This may be more of identifying what works after noticing it's missing. 2025 blurred into a year without concrete goals or rides/runs with a purpose.

-Having a goal race/event really helps for me. Past the spring I had no goal races and so the rest of the year was a little aimless. I had a huge event planned for October but once that got cancelled/modified the intensity and consistency got scaled way back as that specific motivating factor disappeared. When I was doing specific training blocks for the last Marathon had me in great shape and that's lacking now.

-Having people with similar goals really helps. 2024 into 2025 we had a bunch of friends training for an April event so hopping in with them on the weekends got a lot of consistency in.

-Mixing up the biking. Getting a new XC bike recently has been really big for me. It isn't making me faster or slower but having a polar opposite bike to ride makes certain rides different/new. I can ride the same trails and they're totally different.
 
Crashing and not having to go to work for 12 weeks was the highlight of 2025 for me. Also I finished the ITI on a Single-speed, but that wasn't nearly as cool as not being at work. You never realize how much work drains your soul and will to live until you don't go.
 
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