The art of “speed” planning

A week has passed since I decided to go ahead with my cycling plan. One loooooong week. A week seems like a long time when you are thinking about one goal, non-stop, constantly. I knew that just making the decision would not be enough on it’s own, I would have to actually start setting some solid plans or I run the risk of metal entropy, and better sense coming to me. So now I have started telling people, I know I can’t pretend I never decided to do it. But with time could it become an empty promise to myself? So I knew I had to set a date pretty quick, and then work from there actively towards my goal. But when should I do go? An important decision it would seem

Decisions are pretty easy things to make, it’s the consequences that are the real kicker. To make a decision, you just take in all the data you can collect, analyse it, eliminate the risks and then the decision will pretty much make itself. That’s the theory so here is how it went.

1 Year minus all the months when it will be too cold or hot minus how long will it take minus how long will it take me to get ready. Easy.

I needed to find out as much about bike touring as I possibly could quickly. So I googled some bike-ish keywords and came up with a number of different sites. A couple of commercial guided bike touring outfits came up, so they seemed the best place to start for information.

http://www.cyclenewzealand.com was a wealth of information, and gave me a good idea on how far I could expect to go, what I should take, and the types of bikes you can expect to ride. Likewise http://www.advsouth.co.nz and http://www.cyclehire.co.nz had good info and both had a really good run down on when to go. I figured I was in no worse shape than some of the tourists they must get on these tours. So I should be able to safely use their numbers.

One of the most important factors for the trip planning is the best time of year to travel Cycling the length of New Zealand can be done all year round, its just how wet and cold do you want to get? I figured I should expect to take 6 weeks to complete the journey. I could probably do it quicker, but I should have a good week up my sleeve for contingency, and tiki-tours. The best times of year looked to be either Spring or Autumn, when it will be cooler, but not cold, and less wet. As I will be starting in the South Island, I will need to have a good 3 weeks clear of any uncomfortable conditions. If I start in Spring, I don’t want to be baking in summer heat when I get to the upper North Island. If I start in Autumn then I don’t want to be freezing my nuts off as I pass Mt Cook. So early spring or Early Autumn looks good. But in 3 weeks on each island the conditions shouldn’t change drastically.

So I narrowed down the launch dates to be March — April or October — December.

How much prep time will I need. If I am to go in Autumn, what will I need to do to get ready? If it’s Spring, I will have plenty of time, but will it be too far out, and do I run the risk of busying myself with something else. 9 months is a lot of time for some excuse not to do it to materialise. We have some big projects in the pipeline with my business so who knows what could be happening then.

As I talk to some people about my trip, them knowing too well my sporting prowess or lack of it, have suggested I take a year to get into shape. But then others say that the first week on the bike will be enough on the job training I will need. I used to be quite fit, a long long time ago, but I was fit. I could run like Forrest, and I seemed to have pretty good stamina. But of course that was 2 children, a wife, a career and 10,000 beers ago.

So I knew I had an issue two months ago when I was toying with the idea, when I stepped on the scales and looked at 96kg and rising. Everyone is used to the slightly chubby (okay very fucken chubby) version of Vaughan. But in the last couple of months I have dropped 10kg and 4 belt notches. So that is phase one of my fitness program already under way. And the progress so far has been good. I have gone from fear of star jumps because I hated the flapping noise my man-breasts made, to leaping and bounding over fences, couches and small children. I have gone from using the “Jesus” handles in the car as a brace to thrust myself out of the car with, to almost jumping into cars Dukes of Hazzard style through the window. I knew my biggest risk in this whole journey was my weight, and set my target of losing 8kg by New Year’s Eve, or else forget the whole thing. Well I achieved that and better. So the next goal is to be able to ride a bike for 20 minutes without vomiting. To do all of this I would of course need a bike.

If I go in Autumn I will need one, like SOON. If Spring, then I can take my time. What type of bike, and gear ,and clothes and… how long should I acquaint myself with it before I’m on a plane to Stewart Island. If I go for Autumn, will 4–5 weeks be enough?

I was leaning towards Autumn at this stage. If I wanted to do this I should do it sooner rather than later. So the last step was to check my calendar. Damn. I have a conference in April and a Kyle who works with me is on holiday in March. Plus there is a project I need to complete for a customer all before then. Could I do it later in Autumn? If I want to do it now, I need to know what the conditions will be like then.

So a quick visit to NIWA, the National Institute of Weather and Atmospheric research, gave me all the stats I needed. How much rain, and how hot will it be in each centre as I pass through. I puch this into a trusty Google Spreadsheet. Next I trace a route on Google Maps which gives me road distances. From this I figure out I can probably ride 70kms a day. I lay out the number of days between each town, and viola, I have a route, with a time and what the weather will be like when I get there. 42 days in total for the trip. I punch in my start date and it tells me where I can expect to be on which date. And after playing around with spreadsheet magic a bit, I quickly see that my conference in Auckland will be exactly when I am passing through, IF I leave in March. If I take 4 days out for the conference, that pushes my trip out to 47 days, and that’s with plenty of rest days. I will be back home by the end of April. It is doable.

The first or second week of March has now become my target. 4–5 weeks to get ready. Is that too little? I can probably push it out further but it will be getting colder and I could miss the conference, besides I can always fall back on the October option. Go hard or go home, someone once said. It wasn’t me, but it is now my new motto. I will be taking my laptop to blog and keep in touch with the family, and so I will work as I go for a couple of hours every day. Riding will be excellent thinking time, and I can keep in touch with the office everyday. It will be a little harder, but not impossible.

So thats how I did it. Easy huh? Yeah, now comes the hard part. With a launch date pretty fixed, this week I need to organise a bike… and a wee vomit.