September 2025 will mark 20 years of my life spent mountain biking singletrack. This number doesn’t include messing around on trails as a child, and instead, marks a turning point in my life when a light bulb went off and I realized, “This is FUN!!”
As the decades have rolled on, I’ve grown somewhat complacent in my mountain biking goals, particularly when it comes to fitness. Now, I’ve often pursued travel goals, and I continue to pad my numbers with more trail and countries to solidify my status as one of the best-traveled mountain bikers in the world.
And that is one of the things that leads to complacency. When you set a goal and then accomplish it — or, in my case, add up the stats, upload them to a different online platform, and realize that it has already been accomplished — you can feel a distinct letdown at the challenge being over. In Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, philosopher Iddo Landau calls this the “paradox of the end.”
“It is our efforts, which until now we had seen as means, that are really the end,” Landau writes. “Paradoxically, it seems as if the struggle to achieve the end was more meaningful than the achievement of the end.”
Mental barriers arising from limiting beliefs
Thankfully (or not-so-thankfully?), there are always new goals to chase if we look hard enough. In 2024, I realized that even though I’d already accomplished one of my major lifetime mountain biking goals, I had allowed complacency to creep up on me in the form of limiting beliefs. I realized that I had erected many mental barriers in my mind to improving my performance or accomplishing things that I’d long dreamt of. As I started to examine some of those barriers, I realized that they were ultimately self-imposed.
Now, I’ve listened to podcast episodes where guests have opined about “confronting our limiting beliefs,” but I always thought it was a bit disingenuous. In my opinion, the toughest part is first identifying that you have a limiting belief in the first place, as they seem to be, by definition, blind spots. If you knew you had a limiting belief, would you just let it sit there untested? Probably not. Instead, we erect these false barriers without being mentally aware of them.
Over the past several years, I’ve slowly identified several limiting beliefs that have held me back. Instead of being angry at myself for having held onto these beliefs for so long — sometimes, decades — I’ve instead been so thankful to have seen into my blind spots with enough light to recognize them and slowly begin to change them.
I began to question these self-imposed barriers through a series of questions. If you’d like, here are some good questions to try:
- Is this true?
- Is this really true?
- What if I’m wrong about this?
- What if I did the opposite?
- Have other people who are less smart/fit/accomplished/wealthy/privileged than me done or achieved this thing I’m afraid to do?
A few limiting beliefs I’ve shattered (so far).
It’s tough to discuss this idea in abstraction, so to make it concrete, here are a few limiting beliefs I’ve confronted and barriers I’ve shattered, specifically related to physical fitness.
In 2023, I questioned long-held beliefs about my diet, alcohol consumption, and my weight. After switching to a whole foods plant-based diet and cutting out alcohol, I proceeded to lose 20 pounds in three months, and then another five pounds more slowly… and I kept the weight off. At the same time, I quickly increased my speed and endurance on the bike. For more on this journey, check out this article.
Ever since I pedaled a dirty century in 2013, I’ve told myself that I don’t necessarily need to be able to ride 100 miles, but I’d like to be in the kind of shape where I can get off the couch and ride 50 miles of hard singletrack in the mountains at a moment’s notice.
That was 11 years ago, and I still had yet to attain that benchmark. Why? What was holding me back? Sure, I had dealt with several major injuries and a couple of surgeries in the intervening 11 years, but in early 2024, I asked myself some of the questions above and realized that maybe some of the barriers I’d erected around improving my endurance were self-imposed.
So, I dedicated myself to breaking down that barrier piece by piece and slowly building my fitness this year until, in September, I succeeded in riding over 52 singletrack miles, covering all of the trails at Phil’s World in one massive loop.
Shattering more limiting beliefs in 2025.
The past few years have set the stage for what I hope to accomplish in 2025. As I’ve written before, it is the height of foolishness to create a New Year’s Resolution out of thin air and expect to accomplish it. Instead, the best way to accomplish a goal is to launch into it with momentum — to build on previous successes to achieve something new.
This belief informs my focus for 2025, which will consist of shattering even more self-imposed barriers as I strive for new heights. But which barriers? What obstacles will I overcome?
As I alluded to above, I think that limiting beliefs are inherently blind spots in our lives, and thus it’s difficult to identify one until you stumble into it through some combination of self-reflection and being exposed to new outside information.
That said, I think we can get a glimpse of our limiting beliefs by writing down a list of things we’ve always wanted to do or have told ourselves that we want to do “someday.” Then, once you have that list, ask yourself: “Wait a second: why haven’t I done these things yet?”
This will get you really close to honing in on some blind spots and limiting beliefs.
So, while I may not know precisely which barriers I need to shatter, here’s a glimpse into the murky future of what 2025 may have in store.
New Zealand
As I write this, I’m in the midst of an epic journey that I’ve wanted to take for longer than I’ve been a mountain biker: exploring New Zealand.
When I first seriously began planning a New Zealand trip back in 2019, I created a limiting belief that said, “If I’m going to spend the time and money to travel to New Zealand, I need to max out my visa and spend a full three months there. Then, I need to head to Tasmania and mainland Australia and spend at least three to six months there. Next, I have to go to Nepal and see the Himalayas, maybe hit India while I’m in the neighborhood, pop over to Japan…”
My wife has pointed out that this doesn’t really sound like a limiting belief, and instead might be a case of existential overwhelm (see Oliver Burkeman’s work on this topic). While this may be true, I think for me, the desire to have as long of a trip as possible moved from being enabling to limiting — and I think that’s one of the keys. Limiting beliefs are highly personal, and we can only uncover them with truly personal introspection.
In this example, I asked if it was really true that I had to plan a six to 12-month trip or not go at all. So, I trimmed down my ambitions to focus solely on New Zealand, and I’m currently in the midst of a two-month trip, bookending 2024 and beginning 2025 on the right foot.
Building more endurance
Due to a couple of overuse injuries that cropped up following my 50-mile ride (although perhaps unrelated — long story for another time), I had to modify how I structured my training to focus on beginning my New Zealand trip with as much health and all-around fitness as possible. Instead of focusing on building longer one-day endurance, I had to focus on recovery without losing too much fitness, plus building some more foot-sporting endurance for a multi-day hiking objective.
So, once winter wraps up, I’ll have to reassess what building endurance looks like in 2025. Does it mean going longer in a single-day push? Going the same distance (~50 miles), but multiple days in a row? I have a few ideas, which relate to my more specific goals below.
5,000 human-powered miles
My year-long goal is to complete 5,000 human-powered miles in 2025 across all activity types. This would, by far, be the most mileage I’ve completed in a single year. 2024 will actually peg a new high-water mark for me as well, but I probably won’t quite hit 4,000 miles this year (TBD).
As you can imagine, most of these 5,000 miles will be singletrack mountain bike miles, but this goal is intentionally sport-agnostic. That said, here are a couple of basic rules governing this goal:
- They must be actual miles covered outside. I hate seeing people’s Strava recordings this time of year saying they’ve ridden 25 or 50 miles in “Wattopia.” Newsflash: if you’re pedaling on a trainer, you’re riding hours not miles. Learn how to use a dictionary.
- E-bikes are for the elderly and the infirm — neither of which apply to me (yet).
A multi-week European bike tour.
This one comes from the list of “Things I’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet.” After asking myself, “Why the FUCK not, Greg?!” I couldn’t come up with a great reason.
This goal was actually on the docket for 2024 but then ended up getting postponed due to some other life challenges. But instead of capitulating to life, it has remained on the list and been elevated to the Tier 1 goal spot for 2025.
The bike tour got booted from 2024 in part because my wife and I had established New Zealand as the Tier 1 goal for the year. Remember, “You can afford anything but not everything,” as Paula Pant likes to say. “Every choice that you make is a trade-off, and this doesn’t just apply to your money, but also your time, your focus, your energy — any limited resource that you have to manage.” So, the trade-off in 2024 ended up being New Zealand mountain biking over a European bike tour.
Now, nothing is knocking the bike tour out of 2025.
This bike tour probably won’t look anything like a tour you’d sign up for with a commercial company and pay thousands of dollars for. Instead, I’ll plan the entire adventure myself based on the type of riding that my wife and I like to do.
In my opinion, riding in traffic sucks, so I strive to build routes that eliminate as much traffic as possible. Also, I think drop bar gravel bikes are the perfect machines for a long-distance bike tour with variable surfaces. Based on these criteria, I try to build routes anchored by paved bike paths separated from traffic, gravel canal paths, and sinuous singletrack connectors where the opportunity arises.
In early 2024, I used this framework to build a practice ride in Phoenix, which I dubbed the “Water in the Desert Loop.” My wife and I pedaled a 150-mile loop (ending up with 166 total miles of riding) almost entirely on paved bike paths, gravel canal paths, and a few spicy singletrack connections. It was an absolute blast, and I think taking this ideology to Europe will result in an incredible experience.
Parting thoughts
I’ll leave you with a few ideas from one of the foremost thinkers of our time on shattering limiting beliefs: David Goggins. (Yes, I quoted an academic philosopher and David Goggins in the same article.)
We live a life defined by the limits we imagine and desire for ourselves because it’s comfortable as hell in that box.
David Goggins
Have the courage and mental endurance to do whatever it takes to start knocking down those walls. You are the warden of your life. Don’t forget you hold the keys.
David Goggins
Don’t forget that you hold the keys. Now, go out there and shatter some limiting beliefs!
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