Bike Race Timeline
This template came about because I love mountain biking, and I created it to figure out how to achieve some personal goals in the bike races put on by ZiaRides.com in New Mexico. For mountain biking, 12-Hour and 24-Hour races typically involve camping at an awesome location and riding 10-15 mile loops as many times as you can. Some riders enter solo events and log a crazy number of miles, and others enter team events involving a hand-off after each lap, and some like me just go for the fun.
Bike Race Timeline
for Excel 2013+
License: See the Private Use License (not for distribution or resale).
Description
This template includes two example timelines for helping to plan your laps in an endurance bike race. One worksheet is for a 12-hour race and the second worksheet is for a 24-hour race. It works for both solo and teams (up to 4 bikers on a team).
HOW TO USE THIS TEMPLATE
This template is not 100% easy to use, but there are some instructions within it, and if you stick to just editing the cells with the white background and gray borders, you'll probably be able to figure it out. It only works in recent versions of Excel because it uses many chart tricks.
The hardest part may be figuring out how to change the Min/Max range for the timeline axis. First, right-click on the axis and select Format Axis. In the Minimum and Maximum fields, even though it shows a number, you can enter a datetime value like "6/12/2021 7:00 AM" and Excel will convert that to the numeric value.
The point of this template is to help you or your team come up with a reasonable plan for the ride and then print it out - possibly creating a set of good/better/best scenarios.
When creating your plan(s), you'll want to estimate how long a lap is likely to take you as well as each individual on your team. If you're doing a solo race it's unlikely you'll have the time or energy to play with this template on your laptop during the actual event. However, if you're on a team and have a tablet or laptop on hand, you could actually use this during the race to update your times and plan as you go. Anybody who actually does that will probably be my hero.
If you lose your race because of using this spreadsheet, or if you get frustrated using this spreadsheet, go out and ride your bike some more to cool off before complaining to me. It's your own fault for downloading it - I make no promises that it will be helpful.
If you are still reading this, then you win the "I read the whole page award" which allows you to give yourself a pat on the back. You're welcome.
