I’m renowned as a man with a spreadsheet: football predictions, virtual dog racing, 10p Bowling scores, gas and electricity consumption, you name it, I probably have a spreadsheet for it. I also have one for LifeCycle: every mile logged, every ride on every day.
Why?
Call it Business Intelligence, call it what you want, but information is knowledge and knowledge is power. The power (and confidence) that LifeCycle (The Spreadsheet) gives me is the best estimate, week on week, of when this will be over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the challenge, and there’s hardly a day goes by without me thinking about Vanessa, Oscar and MacKenzie, and when the going gets really tough, as it has been this week, they are the people that get me through: and folk like Jane, Angela, Gordon, Lynne, Maimie, Helen, Beastie, Chumba, Kant and Old Father Time – people who’ve been there for me since the start, and who keep on two wheels when four would be oh, so simple.
LifeCycle (The Spreadsheet) says: week 23, and I’ve cycled 21 of them (that wee Christmas break is but a distant memory right now). Miles: 2949. Out with the calculator and we’ll call that 140 miles for the weeks that I’m actually on the bike and 128 overall.
This is where the predictor kicks in…
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future with my job, my health, the weather, all of those things that can derail my plans. But I’ve a pretty good idea that if I factor in the 33 days that I get off from work, including all the public holidays, say another week for being ill, a week for snow and a week’s worth of odds and sods days when I just have to be doing something else outside of riding a bike, I reckon that 44 weeks of LifeCycle out of 52 is achievable. That’s 44 weeks in which I can expect to be clocking up an average of 140 miles. Calculator: 44 times 140 is 6160 miles a year. Let’s round that to 6000 to keep the numbers simple. With almost 3000 on the clock, I need a further 22000 at 6000 a year to finish the job. That’s just over three and a half years. This is January 2014: so that’ll be late summer of 2017…
Ya Dancer, one less winter!!!
I don’t have to ride the winter of 2017/18 when I’m approaching retirement, just so long as I keep my foot on the gas and keep turning those pedals at the same rate as I’ve been doing these last six months. Motivation doesn’t come any easier than that. Only three more winters, not four!
But it gets better than that…
In April, I lose my rota days at work and start working permanent four and a half day weeks: that means I’ll get to bag one more LifeCycle day a fortnight more than I’ve been doing so far. That means approximately 10% more miles every month so 140 suddenly becomes 150. Back to the calculator: 22000 divided by 150 is only 146 weeks, so that’s going to knock another three months off the schedule…
LifeCycle (The Spreadsheet) to LifeCycle (the Project)…
“They Think It’s All Over… It Will Be In July 2017”
Ride2Cure Neuroblastoma 