2017: The Preview

The theme for 2017 (which isn't a good goal because it isn't measurable) is to make the most out of my health while I still have it.

Here's the list, in no particular order:

1. One century per week
2. One Everest
3. 12,000 total miles
4. 1,000 MTB miles
5. 2,500 commuting miles
6. Ride across the country (South to North)
7. Century in 6 new states
8. Ride across Nevada in 2 days
9. 3 bikepacking trips

The first 3 are repeats from last year. This will be my 5th year of riding a century per week, and it's still fun and keeps me in relatively decent shape all year long. It will also be my 5th Everest. I'm not as obsessed with Everesting as I was a while ago, but it's still a huge accomplishment and a ride you'll never forget. I haven't decided which climb to do yet, and that process is half of the fun. Riding 12,000 total miles is less about the number and more about just wanting to ride a lot all year long. As long as I'm riding as much as I want, I'll hit that number no problem.

The same goes for goals 4 and 5. I'm not completely concerned about the numbers. I just want to ride my mountain bike about once per week and 1,000 miles is a little under 20 miles per week. Seems reasonable. I also want to commute about once per week, which works out to around 2,500 miles. I'm not as hardcore about commuting as I used to be. I'm fine being a weather wimp and doing most of those miles during the summer.

Goal #6 is the one that will keep me working all winter. I was looking for a big adventure this year, something to focus on similar to how I focused on Petoji in 2015. Something big that I could look back on at the end of the year and feel good about. I was looking at rides in Europe and there was one in particular that caught my eye, but it's a 2-week ride and it's questionable as to whether I can build up enough vacation time soon enough for that. I get a lot of vacation time at my new job, but I'm still new, so I don't have much built up yet. I shifted my focus a little bit towards shorter rides. That way I can have an adventure, but I can build up for something big next year and still have time to focus some energy on goal #7. What I came up with was more or less a half Petoji. I want to ride across the country from South to North. It's a fun goal. I could do a loop somewhere, but there's something satisfying about riding across something. I'm not sure why that is. I did a rough draft of a couple different routes and it's possible to do the ride in 1,500 miles. That means I can do it in 10 days. 150 miles per day is a lot. I wouldn't want to do that for 2-3 weeks, but it's doable over 10 days. I'm still ironing out all the details, but here is the route I'm working on right now. I still plan on doing it credit card style with no support, but I plan on using a rack and panniers this time mainly because there are some long stretches between towns on this route and I'll need to carry more water. There's not a ton of climbing and most of it is early on in the ride, so the extra weight shouldn't hurt me too much. I'll post more details later on, as soon as I have the dates set in stone.

Goal #7 is probably the second most important goal, just behind riding a century per week. I have a long-term goal to ride a century in all 50 states. I'm halfway there, but I haven't made much progress in the last 2 years. I really want to pick things up this year. 6 seems like an arbitrary number, but I wanted to do 5 last year and didn't do any, so I added 1 to that to remind myself that I need to step it up. This is very achievable in 2017. I work  4-day weeks now, so it's easy to take a weekend trip and have some fun.

#8 is something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I've just had other things that I wanted to do more. I'm putting this on here to sort of force myself to do it. I always had the idea to try to do it in 24 hours, but honestly I think that will suck a lot of the fun out of it, so I'll give myself 48 hours instead.

#9 is similar to #3-5. The number of 3 trips isn't a big number to obsess over. The main thing is that I want to take a few bikepacking trips. There is so much to see around here. I want to get out and see more of it.

There you have it. Those are the goals for 2017. There isn't' one huge goal that will catch your attention on its own, but when you add them all together it will make for a solid year and an improvement over 2016.