A year of riding in 2025

It was the best of years; it was the worst of years. For me 2025 was a mixed bag.

On the one hand I managed to pack in a lot more than the thin number of articles added last year suggests. I’ve already documented our trip to the Alps in late August which was a real highlight.

Elsewhere; unreported and therefore unmarked on the site I managed:

• Another 100 mile loop around Northern France.
• A day trip to the Pas de Calais to catch Stage 3 of the Tour de France.
• Riding the South Downs Way over 2 days.
• Lots of regular weekday night rides.

All great.

The rest of the Moles managed many more weekend rides and the closest thing we have to religious observance is our Sunday rides!

I sadly had to miss out on a multi-day trip to the Normandy beaches which will have to remain on my to-do list, picking up on our WW1 Belgium battlefields theme a year previously.

On the negative side though, my riding had a few downsides:

• I stacked it quite hard in late May on Shaun’s helmet, clouting my head.
• I later stacked it much harder in mid October, whacking my head again and bruising/fracturing a rib or two.
• A long term neck injury appears to be getting worse.
• I’m very burned out!

None of this is good. The last quarter has seen a massive drop off in my riding. This was triggered by my second crash, compounded by long hours both at work and redesigning this website.

But, the real problem is my neck.

A couple of years ago I had an MRI that revealed a prolapsed disc in the neck, right at the top near the base of the skull. That’s probably not an usual condition for anybody to be honest and the effects can be broad, from relatively innocuous to quite severe.

I’ve now reached a point where my sleep is continually disturbed and I have neck pain, shoulder pain and headaches in varying combinations almost every day. I have even been getting pain in my left leg and hamstring which may be originating from my neck.

All this is exhausting and chronic and while the cycling doesn’t appear to make those symptoms worse, it doesn’t help. It’s not agony but it’s there and it doesn’t seem to stop. The various accidents definitely don’t help and the last three months have been quite a trial!

I’m currently attempting to use a physio and build up muscle strength in the shoulders and upper bad. It’s not a quick fix and ultimately I might need something a bit more invasive that I would rather avoid.

I plan to keep riding and find the shorter evening rides suit me better at this point, but my goal is to get the mileage back up. Not falling off is becoming a priority, as is finding a much better level to my base fitness.

The immediate impact last year was to my mileage which ended up a disappointing 3,255 miles (I’ll break down the numbers in another post).

On the plus side, the Moles community is doing great with well-established riding habits and further outings planned for 2026.

This website too has finally been updated and while I still have stuff to do, progress has been significant. The most important thing is to keep adding content; I’m not chasing visitor numbers but I still think independent thought is important and there remains much to say on the topic of cycling.

Thanks as always to everybody who contributes to the site, and most importantly, thanks for reading!