Charlie Custer

2025 Goal Review

Read 20+ books: F. I did slightly better compared to last year, having finished 11 books rather than nine. I definitely didn’t make reading the sort of regular habit I was planning to, but it’s probably worth saying I also did start a few books I never finished, and I’m not counting a few books I read on Chinese furniture (which were mostly photos). And of course, if reading to my daughter counts then I broke 20 easily (and we are reading full novels at this point).

Anyway, despite the relatively low total count, I did read two of my absolute favorite books in a long time this year in A Memory Called Empire (and its sequel) and The Song of Achilles.

Cover 5,000 human-powered miles. B. According to my Garmin’s history, I covered 3,912 miles this past year, but that includes what ended up being nearly a month of sickness (September), and a number of workouts during work trips and over Christmas where I did work out but did not record any distance due to the exercise bikes I had access to. I’m not sure I would have made it to 5,000 miles even under ideal conditions, but it would have been close.

That said, “miles” is sort of a silly metric to track for someone who rides indoors as much as I do, so I will switch this up for this year’s goals.

Figure out how to make a positive impact with cycling/racing. C. The “Unsponsored” team thing didn’t take off like I hoped (mostly due to lack of time/effort on my part) but it did nevertheless result in at least $100 in donations to Maine Needs, so that’s something.

Build something cool with wood. A+. Built two major pieces of furniture (coffee table, kitchen cabinet) as well as some smaller nice things (chessboard, utensil holder) and a bunch of shop furniture (workbench, assembly table).

Find or build some queer community. F. In honesty, I don’t think I can even really claim I tried to do this. I need a better plan.

Bonus goals: I did pretty well at these!

• Place top 10 in a bike race – No, but this is a bad goal anyway. I did put in a good effort in a bike race and have a better goal for next year.
• Take some kind of woodworking course – I took a hand tool woodworking course… and then abandoned hand tools immediately for power tools, but it still counts!
• Increase our emergency and investment funds by 20% – Comparing total savings from 12/15/24 to 12/15/25, we increased by 41%.
• Ship a big, impressive project at work – We have released two Fraud Reports; they are the most impactful and most downloaded content the company has ever produced.
  

2026 Goals

Improve fitness across key metrics. Some of this will depend on what metrics I have access to as of the end of this year (some of these I can’t test myself), but here are some current or near-current metrics to compare against:

• FTP/VT2: 260w, 3.7w/kg
• VT1: 200w
• VO2max: 64.9
• Mainely Gravel race or course time (I’d like to break 3 hours)

I can also look at this report (power curve in Garmin Connect) to see which records I’m able to break in 2026. Currently they’re almost all 2024 records, except for 1min, 2min, 2h, and 5h.

Build a “perfect” piece of furniture. Perfection is obviously impossible, but by this I mean build something that doesn’t have any obvious flaws, something I’d feel comfortable selling.

Find some queer community. I think it’s fairly obvious I’m not going to be building something new myself, so I think the best options here are to find some local volunteering opportunity or to find an online community that’s localized (e.g. Maine or New England).

Fast on the first Monday of every month. I did a 24h fast a month or two ago and found it to be a useful sort of “reset” for my appetite and sugar consumption; I’d like to see if doing it regularly has any benefits. Monday is my training rest day so it’s sort of the only viable option.

Bonus goals:

• Take another woodworking course
• Increase our emergency and investment funds by 20% (again)
• Ship a big, impressive project at work (other than the fraud report)