Coach Jeff Podcast #1325 – Cycling the 2025 Festive 200

December 26, 2025·21 min·1 clip

Coach Jeff and Mrs. Coach kick off their 2025 Festive 200 cycling challenge on Christmas morning in Brisbane.

Coach Jeff opens episode 1325 of The Cycling Podcast on Christmas Day 2025, recording from Brisbane where he and Mrs. Coach are house-sitting in North Lakes. The episode is a live road diary of their annual Christmas morning ride, which they call the Festive 200 this year. Coach Jeff explains the global Festive 500 challenge — an event where cyclists attempt 500 kilometres between Christmas and New Year — and notes a Brisbane group is attempting the full distance non-stop on Boxing Day. He and Mrs. Coach have scaled their own ambitions to 200 kilometres for the week, roughly 120 miles. The Christmas Day ride itself targets 40 kilometres, a distance with a specific origin story: their old coach Simon originally asked for 20k, riders argued, and he doubled it as a consequence. That 40k has been their Christmas morning standard ever since. The couple has ridden every Christmas Day for more than 30 years, originally decorating bikes with tinsel and riding in a group around town. Riding north out of North Lakes, they navigate bike paths and back streets toward Deception Bay before looping east to the coast at Scarborough and Queen's Beach. Passing Flinders Parade, Coach Jeff notes they lived there for nearly a decade and reflects on the privilege of swimming across the road daily. Mrs. Coach joins briefly on the road, admitting the distance feels manageable at that point. A planned stop at 7-Eleven Dacob changes to 7-Eleven Mango Hill, where they collect Christmas tree doughnuts and a Santa doughnut filled with chocolate. They then ride to Zaraffa's Coffee at the top of Mango Hill for a proper coffee, a departure from their usual tradition of 7-Eleven's one-dollar coffee. With 38 kilometres completed and doughnuts consumed, Mrs. Coach jokes she thought the challenge was the Festive 20, not the Festive 200. Coach Jeff teases her about the full week ahead and notes the morning ride is a great way to build appetite for Christmas lunch. He closes by encouraging listeners doing their own festive cycling events — including Festive 100s in both miles and kilometres — and promises to return later in the week with more updates from the road.

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