2018: The Preview

As always, my mission is to make the most out of my health while I still have it.

I made too many goals last year. I'm going to keep things simple this year and only list my most important goals. Here they are, in order:

1. Ride a century per week.
2. Ride a century in 7 new states.
3. Complete the Trans Am Bike Race in 20 days or less.
4. Everest this climb.

That's it. This will be my 6th year riding a century per week, so that's nothing new. As I've mentioned before, I still love doing a weekly long ride and it keeps me in somewhat decent shape all year long. It's my #1 goal because I like the consistency that it requires and as long as I reach this goal I will consider it a mostly successful year.

Goal #2 is something that I've failed 2 years in a row. In 2016 I wanted 5 states, then in 2017 I upped it to 6 just to remind myself of 2016's failure. I'm upping that to 7 in 2018 as another reminder. Also, completing goal #3 would give me 2 new states and I like the idea of doing 5 extras on their own. If all else fails, a week-long trip to the northeast should solve this problem.

The 3rd goal is huge, so it feels weird to put it so low on the list. I'm going to focus the entire first half of 2018 on this goal and it means a lot to me. This is by far the toughest challenge on my list and the one that I'm not 100% certain that I'm capable of doing.

As for the 4th goal, I keep telling myself that I'm done Everesting, but I'm always drawn back. When I moved to Alamogordo and started doing this climb regularly, all I could think about is how it's the perfect long climb for an Everesting attempt. I don't have a specific date in mind, but probably Spring or Fall since the Trans Am is in June.

I'm sure I'll add a few extra smaller goals along the way. I usually have a yearly mileage goal, but I'm not too concerned about that this year. 12,000 is my normal target. I should hit that again as long as I accomplish the 4 goals listed above.

Best of luck to you all in 2018.