An idiot’s guide to a charity bike ride — Part I: The idea

I just rode a bike from one end of New Zealand to the other and as I went I raised funds for a small charity, TASC, that does fantastic things for people with spinal injuries. When I started, right back at the very beginning when I came up with the crazy idea to spend 7 weeks on a bike, I had no idea what I was doing or how to organise it. Now, after having two weeks to recover from my ride of 2,266 kilometres from Stewart Island in the south up to Cape Reinga in the north, I thought it was time to reflect and take a look at the anatomy of exactly what I just did.

If someone wanted to swim, pogo, rollerskate, or ride a bike their way on a journey of a few thousand kms, what advice would I give them? Well I have broken it down into in a series of posts where I will cover:

• The idea — What exactly are you going to almost kill yourself doing.
• Planning — How to make sure you don’t actually kill yourself. It is all about planning, planning and more planning baby (then a bit more planning thrown in for good measure).
• What to take — The essential items for survival and sanity. I will review what I took on my ride and why.
• Keeping everyone informed — Letting people know your still alive, and moving. How do you raise awareness of your adventure and at the same time let your wife/husband/parents sleep at night and keep everyone in the loop?
• Getting to the end — How to accomplish your goal (or die trying). What I learnt “on the job” that got me through to the very end.

The idea.

You could argue that this is the most important step. Without the idea you will be still doing your 9–5 job and no one will want to donate money for you to do that. So the idea needs to be suitably interesting and hard. It is one thing to pick something you are really good at and can do very well in moderation, but setting out to walk to work every day for a week may not be the sort of thing that will inspire people to get in behind your cause, unless of course you live 50km from your office, and it is snowing. The idea needs to be achievable, measurable, inspirational, and most importantly, really really hard for you to do. Think of why you want to do it too. For me, I was inspired by my mother who has spent the majority of her life (and all of mine) in a wheelchair. I wanted to do something on wheels that was also a tribute to her and all the tough times she must have faced and overcome. You may have your own reasons with special meaning and it is these sorts of connections that will keep you going later on when you are exhausted and hit rock bottom.

Achievable. To be achievable, you need to know it is something you can more than likely succeed at. No one wants to set out on an adventure that they know deep inside is doomed right from the start, but at the same time don’t expect to break 12 Olympic records either, because that is probably impossible. Having said that, impossible is one of those funny words that people tend to misuse. Originally when I was thinking about my ride, I chose it because I thought is was impossible for me to do. Then I realised that actually I could do it therefor it wasn’t impossible, it was just highly improbable. Impossible and improbable are two very different things so don’t confuse them. Leave that up to everyone else to do and let them be surprised when they realise you are doing what they think is impossible.

Measurable. Next, to be measurable your goal needs to be something that others can see and measure your progress on. When you set out, people will pretty much be in one of two camps; those who think you can do it and those who think you will fail. As you go they need to be able to validate their position, or be proven wrong. I cycled from one end of New Zealand to the other, a route that has a distance of 2,266km, wrapped up in a timeframe of 7 weeks. I had a mix of people who thought I could do it, but a large number of people who thought I would fail miserably. I was measuring my ride every day with the distance I travelled and how many days I had been on the bike. The further I went the more I validated those who believed me, and made it more compelling for those who thought I would fail to keep following my progress. I called these “public” metrics.

Public metrics are those that are easily verified by their very own nature. For example, by crossing geography you have the benefit of it being self validating. When you were at A and then get to B, it is obvious that you are succeeding.When you report you just rode 100km in a day and you are now in Dunedin, this is easily understood and realised by others. It is more real to them than if you say, set a goal to NOT eat 12 donuts a day. This sort of metric is not as real to others as they can’t easily validate it. In order to prove it you would need to go to great lengths to show people you are actually achieving your mission. So that metric is private. By doing it, only you really know it to be so. Each day I cycled from one place to the other, it was immediately evident to others that I was on the road, literally, to achieving my goal. It was real. At the same time I was also measuring myself on my fitness and how much weight I lost, and these were “private” metrics. I shared them with the world but they were not as dynamic and really only I could easily realise them on a regular basis.

Inspirational. Do something that has a bit of “crazy” in it. This could be anything, and will be different for different people. But the key is to pick something that people don’t normally do, and that others would not image is possible of YOU. If you are a complete bike nut, and occasionally enter bike races and sometimes win then you wouldn’t choose to just ride the length of NZ as I did. Instead you would choose to ride NZ in under a week, naked. That would have more “crazy”. I was overweight and unfit and no one would have ever imagined I would ride a bike to the shop let alone from one end of the country to the other.

To inspire others, but more importantly yourself, you will need to break through some barriers that would normally stop you. These barriers could be age, fitness, mental state, geography, culture … anything. Anything that would stop you when it probably shouldn’t. But it also needs to be …

…really really hard. If it was easy then everyone will think “So what, I can do that”. You need to challenge yourself otherwise you wont do it. That may sound stupid, but if you knew you could really do it and it would be easy, you wouldn’t do it. One of the big reasons why you are embarking on your adventure is to prove to yourself that you can do it. Oh and to prove wrong all those bastards who think you will fail.

So have you got your idea?

In the next few posts I will cover planning, what to take, how to keeping everyone informed and how to make sure you get to the end. I will use my bike ride as the example, but I am sure it will apply to what ever you choose to do on your adventure.