2023 was a good year for exercise, bike riding, and getting moving. The time and days active moved back up to about where I want them to be and probably about as much as is it’s going to be for now. The kids are at such a fun age and only adding activities, Family time is key, and I really do enjoy my career which takes time as well. With that said, I like to be outside and exercising as much as possible. I set some goals of riding or running 5 days a week or so, which for a 52 week year means 260 days active. I’m not obsessive about starting tracking for every activity I do, so honestly if I have 250 tracked days then odds are there are more than 10 days of untracked things and less “structured” activities.

2023 didn’t have as much racing as I’ve done in the past. I think I only had 2 actual events last year. PMBAR and Downieville which is the least number of events I’ve done in 10 years or so. It’s ok, though. I’ve sort of embraced trying to do less events but making at least one riding trip with friends work out and then prioritizing the few local events that I really enjoy. Then just ride hard with friends when I get the chance. It’s been a little hard sometimes, the FOMO gets real sometimes. At the end of the day, it’s been nice though. I’ve had the chance to get out on more rides with friends than I have in the past years and probably become a better rider overall.

I will admit that looking at a lot of the Strava year in reviews it’s amazing how it seems like I ride a lot, but then a lot of the folks I ride with will have 2-3 times the miles and time involved than I do. Now to be fair, most of them don’t have young families. I’m pretty grateful that I get the chance to go push myself and ride with a lot of these folks, it also makes me feel a little better when I’m getting dropped…

While I didn’t race as much, I got to enjoy some other things around the bike over the year. The kids are getting more and more capable with their bikes and riding all the time. We’ve done some trails at Dupont, given it’s hit or miss sometimes but it’s still loads of fun to get out there with them doing the thing I love to do. They’re both good at it too when they want to enjoy it. I also tried to prioritize making time to get into some group rides and ride with friends a little more. It’s been fun, it’s a challenge working other people’s schedules into the family schedule sometimes but it’s made the less racing part not seem like much of a thing. I also had the chance to keep up some bike related travel with friends this year. The Downieville trip, we raced, but also had the chance to hang out, do some other riding, and in general get away and have some fun. I love to travel to new places, I love to ride bikes, it’s awesome putting those things together.

As we got towards the end of the year, I realized I was starting to get close to seeing a mileage milestone. With about 8 weeks left in the year I had about 800 miles left to get to 4,000 miles. I made the decision to set a goal of 100 miles a week for the rest of the year to get to that number. November and December tend to be tough months for a lot of motivation. It was nice to have something to work towards. It did mean that I spent more time on the road and gravel riding the drop bar bike but that was nice too. Sort of gave me a good reason to mix the bikes up. Also, road riding is really good for your fitness….I managed to make it to the 4000 mark pretty easily, although it did take some conscious effort to get out there and go after more miles a few times that I probably would have just ridden short miles on the mountain bike.

I do think I’m going to try and set a few goals for this year that force me to mix things up more than I might have in the past. The variety is good for a lot of things. Anyhow, 2023 was another good year riding bikes and honestly for so much more, family wise, work wise, etc. just doing what I can not to take anything for granted.