I have not had the best 2025 in terms of sports. I was outdoor a lot, and quite active, but I was also injured on my foot for the better half of the year, which was not helpful for going running (or cycling for that matter). But this is now all healed up and I’m happy and ready to get back.

Goal #1: Run Jungfrau Marathon

Look this one is quite easy. Well not easy to train for, but the goal is clear.

Jungfrau Marathon is perhaps the most beautiful marathon in the world. Starting in Interlaken at 567 meters, you run 42.195 km while climbing nearly 2,000 meters of elevation to finish at Kleine Scheidegg at 2,302 meters—all with the stunning backdrop of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. It’s brutal, it’s gorgeous, and it sells out every year for good reason.

The 2026 edition is on September 12th, and I’ve already secured my spot. Now comes the hard part: actually training for it.

Goal #2: Increase my Eddington number to 40

This one requires a bit of explanation. The Eddington number is named after Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), the British astrophysicist famous for confirming Einstein’s theory of general relativity during a solar eclipse expedition in 1919. But besides being a brilliant scientist, Eddington was also an avid cyclist and a bit of a stats nerd—a man after my own heart.

He devised a simple but elegant measure for cycling achievements: your Eddington number E is the largest number such that you have cycled at least E kilometers on at least E separate days. So an Eddington number of 40 means you’ve done at least 40 km on at least 40 different days.

What makes this metric beautiful is how it gets progressively harder to increase. Going from E=10 to E=11 just means you need one more day of 11+ km. But going from E=39 to E=40? You need to have 40 separate days where you rode 40 km or more. And E=100? That’s 100 days of century rides. Eddington himself reportedly achieved an E of 84–87 (in miles, the madman).

My current number is somewhere in the mid-30s, so 40 feels achievable but will require consistent effort throughout the year.

Goal #3: Get my tiles max square to 14x14

Okay, this one is admittedly a bit nerdy. If you’re not familiar with tile hunting: services like VeloViewer divide the world into a grid of squares (tiles), and every time you cycle or run through one, you “collect” it. Your max square is the largest complete square of tiles you’ve visited.

It sounds silly, but it’s genuinely one of the most motivating gamification features I’ve encountered. It pushes you to explore new routes, venture into areas you’d never otherwise visit, and sometimes plan entire rides around capturing that one missing tile in the corner.

My current max square is 13x13, and getting to 14x14 will require some creative route planning. There’s one particularly challenging tile that’s been taunting me:

I’m still figuring out the logistics for that one. Kayak? Very determined swimming? We’ll see.

So there we have it. Three goals, three different flavors of challenge. I’ll try to post updates throughout the year. Wish me luck—especially for that lake tile.

Strava as social media

Strava is essentially social media, but with an outdoors, workout, or general position-based spin. It’s great for sharing the route of your latest run. It’s fun to use and generally works quite well.

It integrates smoothly with many platforms. Have an Apple Watch? Just download the Strava app and you’re good to go. If you have a Suunto, just connect it. If you have a Garmin, connect the two platforms and all your workouts will sync to Strava. And if nothing else works, you can always upload your GPX or FIT files to Strava and it will share your workout.

Then people give you Kudos, which of course tickles our reward centre in just the right way. And while I’m typically sceptical of all the dopamine apps, if it gets people to go for a run, I guess that’s okay³.

Now, of course, some people are addicted to dopamine, but I don’t think Strava users are as affected by this as users of other social media apps. So what happens when you can’t use Strava with Garmin anymore (at least not easily)? A large chunk of people will just leave Strava.

And to be fair, that very much includes me. I think it’s fun my friends can see me run or ride, but as soon as it becomes annoying for me to add my workouts to Strava, I’m going to stop doing so. And probably delete my account.

Strava as a workout platform

Of course, other people consider Strava to be a workout platform. And there are a few workout features, which is fair enough. But if you look at Garmin, from a pure workout-platform perspective, Garmin is better. It gives you more insights (not just for workouts, but other health data from during the day).

And if you’d like to look at other options, Runalyze probably gives you much better features. Other platforms also have better training features or can produce better training plans.

Long story short, I don’t think Strava is a great workout platform, and I’d put it much more in the social media basket.

Lawsuit prediction time

What do I think will happen with the lawsuit? Well, if anyone with any sense gets to Strava, they’ll probably drop it and figure out how to work with Garmin. But based on previous experience, Strava is going to go ahead, and I guess we hope Garmin doesn’t cut off their data supply.