2011 Spreadsheets

Willie Nevin

Willy Nevin has created a spreadsheet that lists distances between controls and shows your arrival times at those controls given a certain pace for each leg. The spreadsheet is downloadable, and by changing the pace for any segment, the arrival times and total finish time is modified. See attachments below for the downloadable spreadsheet.

Tim Feldman

Tim Feldman has created a planning spreadsheet, you can find it below as PBP2011-planner.<version>.xlsx. Version r5 has calculated control open and close times based on formulas on the RUSA site, while r6 has times from 2007 (see 2007 Control Open/Close times).

Nick Bull

For me, the trouble with most planning spreadsheets is that they start by having you put in how fast you can ride on each segment.  But unless I know how hilly the segments are, I don't know how fast I can ride it.

So this spreadsheet starts with GPS track information so that I know what the terrain will be like.  It then uses that information, plus variables that can be controlled by the user (e.g. their total weight with bicycle, the weight of the bicycle, where and for how long they expect to sleep, etc), and combines that with the results of an econometric model to generate a raw forecast of the ride.  That raw forecast can then be hand-modified, if desired (I have added fifteen minutes to each control, because PBP control logistics can be expected to be slower).  Finally, the expected arrival time at the end of each leg is shown.  This can be used to create an annotated cue sheet with expected arrival times at any given point.  A summary page shows the expected arrival time at controls. 

The spreadsheet has a "notes" page that may be helpful in understanding how to use it.

While this spreadsheet might be considered by many to be laughably overcomplex, I have been using the same basic methodology to forecast rides and to help stay on track with the ride for the last couple of years, and I and others have found it useful.  I like to annotate the cue sheet with expected arrival times every fifteen miles or so.  It's particularly helpful in really hard sections where you feel like you are running way behind, but then when you get to the next time mark you find you are doing just about as expected.

Control times are overly generous.  I could hand-adjust those down, but prefer to see how much I can beat those control times by, and get "ahead of schedule."