2025 Year in Biking

A good year cycling is when I can think back and say “I didn’t miss anything I wanted to do.” This year had it all – a century, lots of gravel riding, a bit of mountain biking, some great trips, and lots of memories baked into my mind.

For past years check here.

VeloViewer Year in Biking

The Interesting Bits

Mileage

Almost hit 4,000. Almost. I decided against doing ~100 miles on New Year’s Eve, though, given the sub-freezing temps outside and the painfulness that would be on a trainer ride inside.

No big bikepacking adventure in 2025. But 2026 is shaping up to be a lot better in that regard, check out the end of this blog post for more info about that.

Cycling broke down to 607 indoor trainer miles and 3,281 outdoor miles. Nice balance. I had 1,070 trainer miles last year which means I was a lot happier (being outside riding) in 2025 than in 2024.

Of the outdoor miles, 715 of them were done on my new Trail Donkey gravel bike (review coming soon?). This bike was a huge addition to my fleet of bikes and I’ve loved every second of riding it so far. SRAM 1x is an excellent setup for outdoor gravel riding when you’re exploring on your own and don’t need to hold pace and cadence in a line with other cyclists.

Eddington

A good year for my Eddington¹ number! I needed 5 more days of 34+ miles to creep it up to 34, which was unlikely to happen late in the year once road cycling was replaced with gravel and mountain bike and indoor trainer rides.

Next year I should focus more on beating 34 and hitting 35. That’ll mean being conscious of those ~30-ish mile rides where adding just 1-2 more miles will allow me to boost my Eddington by year end. My best bet at doing this might be tacking miles on to the front of my weeknight Team Evesham rides.

816 Explorer Tiles, 10x10 max square

Worked hard at this one in the month of September. I really, really wanted that 10x10 max square for the first time ever.

Some new things I did for this year:

• Sniped the bottom right corner of the tile. In years past I had always avoided this area, because biking on some of the only roads which allow you to clip the tile kinda sucks. Those roads still suck! But I wanted the tile.
• I almost connected to top-left corner together. Need to ride down (never up) Tumble Falls Road next year.
• Funny, I connected my mountain biking in 6 Mile Run back to my main square via the Tour de Towpath ride in October.
• I believe that top-left section not connected to my main square is the Buck’s Gravel ride I did. One ride, lots of tiles acquired.
• I also explored the canal path more to my south, both on the PA side riding all the way to Bristol, PA and back (about ~30 miles round trip) and on the NJ side, taking the canal down to Bordentown, NJ and then hopping on the River Line train to ride into Philadelphia for lunch.
• I didn’t write about it in my 2024 review post, but my max tile there was down in South Jersey where I ride with Team Evesham on week nights and Sunday’s. I guess having a newborn at home in 2024 didn’t give me the time I needed to ride more locally!

Compared to years gone by:

Strava Year in Sport

Strava keeps changing their Year in Sport, so the heck with comparing it to last year. Here’s this year.

Click any photo to open a gallery.

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My favorite riding pics from 2025

I often use these posts to look back on memories of cycling gone by, and I wanted to include a few of my favorite memories from this current year along with a caption on each one (click the image to open a lightbox viewer showing the caption). When I’m looking back on this post in one, two, or more years it will be nice to revisit these.

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Revisiting 2024’s Goals

I said back in 2024 these were my 2025 riding goals:

• More hiking with Evelyn, my new daughter
• Giving Evelyn some rides to day care in the summer using my bike and a bike trailer for her
• Getting Evelyn a balance bike by end of year, if she’s ready for it
• Keeping myself above 3,000 miles ridding for the year

Hitting 3k miles, check. ✅

Ev is only now ready for a balance bike, but it’s frigid and snowy here this December so I think we’ll hold off on that until spring comes again. I’m really excited about this because she’s a pretty bouncy and active kid who likes her playhouse, going down slides, and riding in her (fake) car. So I think the balance bike will be a big hit, especially when she sees Mommy and Daddy riding their own bikes alongside her.

I did try a bike ride from the house, along the canal path, and over to her daycare while towing the bike trailer. It was… fine. But the only bike I’ve currently got setup for this hauling is the Kona Sutra which is my least favorite bike right now. I might try using a different bike in the spring, either Kristin’s never-ridden e-Bike or my new Trail Donkey gravel bike. That might motivate me to do this ride more often. The other challenge I found was the distance of ~14 miles each way on gravel with a trailer turns this into a ~3-ish hour affair. That’s a lot of riding to pick up a kid from daycare!

Hiking + walking was down this year, 40 miles in 2025 versus 68 miles in 2024. Maybe I forgot to record them, but I also know we prioritized cycling much more in 2025 which left less time to get out and do day hikes with Ev and Kristin.

I got back to doing one century per year. That was a hard ride done earlier in the season (June), but I’m glad I knocked at least one of them out. I never did find the time later in the season to do another. My normal century is the August Covered Bridges ride in the Lancaster, PA-area was taken over by a joint ride with Kristin, and once my gravel bike arrived I lost interest in doing road rides as much on the weekends. Let’s see if I can hit two century rides in 2026.

2026 Goals

• Get Ev on a balance bike
• Try another trip to/from daycare using a bike different from the Kona and with Ev in the trailer
• Get to 4,000 miles cycling
• Complete the VTXL across Vermont bikepacking the whole way

The VTXL in 2026

My employer offers sabbatical time off every ~5 years, and next year is my 15 year work-a-versary so I’ve opted to take the 4-weeks of vacation offered. I intend to use a good chunk of that time riding my new Trail Donkey gravel bike across the state of Vermont, following the VTXL trail. 300 mile and 30,000 feet of elevation gain.

Riding south to north, I’ll then turn west and meet Kristin and Ev near Stowe, VT for a family vacation. Should be a nice way to spend two weeks of my life next year.

January 2026 is the start of my training for this epic ride!