Planning Trailwalker – free timing spreadsheet

How long can our breaks be? What pace do we need to maintain to finish within a certain time? What time (and checkpoint) should the support team plan meals? Trailwalker is a big undertaking, but for teams who haven’t done it before there can be a lot of questions to answer around the practicalities of when you’ll be at various places on the route. To help answers these one of the team created a handy spreadsheet which allows you to model when you’ll be passing through checkpoints.

Over the last 7 months, 8 dedicated walkers have been preparing for this year’s Oxfam Trailwaker event. From fundraising events to practice walks such as the Orwell 25, the walkers have been doing their best to guarantee success on the day. However, not only has the team been putting in the miles across the Suffolk countryside, they’ve also been organising the practicalities of getting 16 walkers and support crew down to, and across, the south downs. Part of this planning is trying to model where the walkers are going to be passing through the different checkpoints and this is where this spreadsheet might be helpful.

To use it follow this link to the Trailwalker timing spreadsheet hosted on Google docs. To start, first make a copy within your own Google account, and then you can edit away.

All you need change are the parts highlighted in green - the start times, break times and expected walking mph for 3 different sections of the walk. They are broken down in 3 groups of checkpoints as, with the best will in the world, it’s likely that the last few miles might be a little more pedestrian than the first!

The spreadsheet will automatically update so you can model lunch stops, paces and expected finishing times for all those with family and friends coming to support.

If you find it useful, please do give it a Tweet, share on Facebook or link back to this post as a way to say thanks.  Alternatively please feel free to donate on our fundraising page. On the day we’ll be broadcasting live updates of our progress through the Crafted Trailwalker Twitter account.

Happy walking!