With 2025 wrapped up I’d like to look back and reflect on the year and more specifically, a set of personal goals I’ve set.

2025 was fast-paced, really challenging at times, but overall, a really great year to reflect back on.

Key takeaways:

• I am the fittest version of myself, both physically and mentally
• AI assisted coding has allowed me to make a lot of direct contributions across my teams, something that wouldn’t be feasible without AI given demands of the role

2025 Goals

At the start of the year, I’ve set myself a rather ambitious set of goals:

Health

Reduce body weight by 11% from 84.5 to 75kg by 31st of December 2025 - Missed

At least half of the year I had no sugar and no alcohol in 2025. That combined with running has driven my weight to 78kg and I was noticeably slimmer from my December/January peak. I’ve since maintained my weight around 80/81kg and some of it comes from an increase in lean mass (as further evidenced by reduction in bodyfat). So I am far from my initial target, but I am actually fairly happy with my current weight. I can always lose more fat, but I wouldn’t want to lose muscle mass.

Reduce body fat by 20% from 23.7% to 19% by 31st of December 2025 - Missed

My current reading is around 20/21% and this improvement is noticeable, but falls short of the target. I’d like to continue losing bodyfat in 2026, but I won’t set explicit goals as it isn’t a core target, but rather a byproduct of other goals.

Resting heart rate of 55bpm by 1st of January 2026 - Missed

Apple Watch can be at play here - but I notice that days with physical activities actually drive my resting heart rate up. That combined with stresses of life and caffeine meant that I do not see a lasting improvement.

Stop using Otrivine daily - Hit

I have life-long sinus issues and for the last 7-8 years I’ve been using Otrivine daily. You are not supposed to use it beyond a few days as it creates a vicious cycle where you need to use a medicine to combat its own side effects. You can’t go to sleep without using it. Eating meals can be problematic. You grow a little paranoid about this medicine, so you end-up having a spray in a car, in every bag, in most jacket pockets and even at your desk in the office. In an unrelated discussion with GP he has suggested to go cold turkey on Otrivine, suffer through a first few days and see what comes of it (great advice doc, like I didn’t know). Yet, having GP asking me to do this has created a commitment that I’ve probably lacked myself - so I went cold turkey, no longer have any Otrivine lying around my clothes and bags and I am enjoying a much improved quality of breathing.

Read 12 books, with at least 6 for entertainment - Hit(ish)

I’ve read Dune’s first book in print and loved it. The rest of the books were part paper/part audio (majority is audio though). Most of my listens were done in the last 4 months of the year, that’s when I finally bought SHOKZ OpenFit 2 and started to listen for 3/4 hours per week at 1.5x speed.

Fitness

I’ve done at least one activity for the last 52 weeks. Compared to 2024, my fitness has been a lot more steady where I went through January-August and September onwards levels of fitness. I’ve really pushed it in September when I increased my volume to catch-up on runs I’ve missed earlier in the year. Increased fitness activity has resulted in half-a-million more steps throughout the year, a number difficult to put in perspective.

Run 1000km - Hit

I’ve run 1068.8km which has taken me 109 hours. Prior to 2025 my total distance was 605km over a number of years. Initially, it has taken me ~6 months to finish a 9-week “Coach to 5k” programme. I thought that pains and injuries would never stop and running is something I am incompatible with. Yet, with a few added stretches, good shoes and pacing myself I have finally got into the rhythm where I’ve managed to hit the 1k goal. This is really hard to comprehend as I’ve covered the distance from London to Edinburgh to Dublin (running on water is mainstream, right?) by running this year.

I still rate most of my runs as either hard or very hard, it is rare when they feel easy and joyful. Yet, joy comes from interactions with surroundings, community, competing against myself, sense of accomplishment that kick-started 141 days this year. I’ve managed to run two half-marathon distances setting my max distance records and would like to continue increasing my maximum range.

I am finding increased range an enabler for joy and exploration. When traveling, you can take risks and just go for exploratory runs knowing that even if you come to some dead-ends you are in a good shape to make it back to the base. I’ve run during some of my trips to Cornwall, Cotswolds, Las Vegas. Running has allowed me to explore a lot of area in a very little time. Increased range allows you to travel by foot and a lot of exploration was around London and I’ve taken thousands of pictures of beautiful, curious or weird things that I’ve noticed on my runs.

Graph shows that I’ve been behind target for most of the year with too-slow of a start, but a pick-up in the second half of the year has made up for lost runs.

Perform 18,250 push ups in 2025 - Missed

First 5 days were the worst. I then had an excellent consistency and had a 4-month streak. 50 push-ups got too easy, so I increased them to 75 in May. Then 100 in September. 125 in mid-October. While these increases were the right decision for a progressive overload of my muscles, they broke a habit of having push ups to do every morning. For 2026 I’ll go back to 50 a day and will try to stick with them, despite inefficiency of this method.

I’ve still managed ~14k push ups and I can clearly see benefits through changes in my upper-body physique. It only takes 2-3 minutes per day to do 50 push ups, but results are pretty great.

Be able to do 100 consecutive push ups - Missed

I’ve got to 55, but progress has plateaued. I didn’t prioritise finding and executing on techniques to raise my ceiling - something I’ll try again in 2026.

Be able to do 25 consecutive pull ups - Missed

This has failed spectacularly. I haven’t even done 25 pull ups in the entire year, let alone the ambitious 25 consecutive. I’ve been to the gym only once this year, they’ve removed pull-up bar and I can’t set one up in my flat due to unusual door frames used. I’ll have a more grounded goal for 2026, but I’ll likely need to rely on the outdoor gyms for training. Something running can help me with in terms of access.

Increase V02 max by 25% from 34.4 to 43.1 to rank higher than average by end of the year - Missed

Using Apple Watch - I’ve got to 39, which is a 13% improvement. I also had a high of 41.6 a few months ago. Garmin is more optimistic with 44 peak and 42 currently. Either way it is a miss.

Other

Get comfortable letting go of material things by decluttering - get rid of 50 unloved items - Hit

I’ve got rid of plenty of items and hit the target, but in the process I understood that I need a different measure. Ease of buying things online, and especially through Amazon, meant that despite decluttering, I own more things now vs a year ago. I’d like to start reducing overall number of possessions, even if slightly.

2026 Goals

Health

• Increase lean mass by 5% - instead of just losing weight, I’d like to build up some muscle this year.
• Read 12 books, with at least 6 for entertainment

I will not be setting bodyfat, weight or resting heart rate targets as I don’t have an enormous confidence in Apple Watch data. I’ll continue monitoring them, but my method of improving these metrics will be through running, cycling and going to the gym.

Fitness

My colleague Piotr has cycled 1k+ km in 2025, while I did a similar distance through running. We’ve both agreed to share goals for 2026 and raise the stakes - so we’ll be running and cycling 1500km each. A tough target for both, so really looking forward to making the most of it.

• Run 1500km. This is an easy target as all I need to do is to maintain my current volume - but setting this goal will force me to not over-index on cycling/gym.
• Run sub-2 hours half-marathon - I’d like to add more method to my runs so they push my fitness abilities forward, instead of running the same 5, 10, 20k routes at the same speed. My current time is ~2:07
• Run for a 30km in a single run - I am not chasing full marathons yet, but it would be nice to increase max distance from the current 21.3km
• Cycle 1500km. I’ve only cycled 20km in 2025, but I loved it immensely. I am finding cycling much more fiddly than running as you’ve got to prepare routes and gear. It feels very inefficient to go for sub-hour spins. At 1500km yearly I’ll need to put-in 30km/week which is easily covered with ~2h of gravel cycling around Richmond Park. This creates an opportunity for a predictable routine of cycling for 2 hours in the morning during the weekday. I also hope to have long cycles once weather permits and break through 100km and 100 miles single-ride targets.
• Cycle for 100km in a day - London to Brighton sounds lovely
• Cycle for 100mi in a day
• Perform 18250 push ups - take 2
• Be able to do 100 consecutive push ups - I’ll see if weight-training will benefit push ups
• Be able to do 12 consecutive pull ups - significantly revised-down target

Joy

• Travel to Japan
• Sleep 3 nights in the tent

Disclaimer: some of the links might become affiliate. This is two-fold: understand how content monetisation performs and to fund my upcoming projects where I plan to create and share open datasets