ezChart Owners Manual

EzChart: The Owner’s Manual
or
Total World Domination: Round Two

By Jim Winterer
March 26, 2011

The goal of EzChart is to help you think about the steps involved in planning a rally, visualize multi-day rallies, pre-plan your pace and mileage for each leg of a rally, and estimate the time of day that you will arrive at any given mileage along your route. It is the “next step” after you’ve loaded rally data into your computer and are ready to plan your leg.

This manual is presented in the spirit that Curt Gran shared the EzBake system of processing rally data. For now, I would like to keep this owner’s manual within the EzBake group that is gathering in Stillwater, Minn., on March 26. You are the crash-test dummies; I’m concerned that without an explanation of how to use EzChart, it could cause problems and people will hate me.

Ideas to improve EzChart are encouraged.

EzChart comes in a paper version, which looks like it was drawn by a second-grader, and a powerful and dynamic Excel version that was progressively developed by Mike Senty, my son Will Winterer, and Curt Gran. I will explain how the paper version works first; the Excel version then will be a snap to figure out. You’ll love it.

This discussion assumes you are familiar with EzBake, and you have your favorite mapping program loaded with the bonus pushpins in your favorite colors and shapes.

EzChart and the route-planning method were developed using a piece of paper and pencil, Streets and Trips 2010, EzBake, the full (paid) version of GPSU and the 2610 and 2720 StreetPilots. The principles don’t change and can be adapted to your weapons of choice. You can use your version of this method to pre-plan other rally legs. I’m not familiar enough with MapSource to make references here to that mapping program, so I won’t pretend to try.

The paper and Excel versions of EzChart described here use the dates, riding times and start-stop points for the two legs of the 2011 Iron Butt Rally. This saves you a TON of work, and you’re welcome J

Two Cautions

Caution 1: When it comes to using the time-mile chart to find the time of day you’ll arrive at a bonus stop, this chart works well when the rally leg consists of an average mix of freeway, two-lane and some gravel roads.  It has been tested on many rally legs. This chart, however, is based on a fixed mph average; if your route takes you into extensive twisty mountain areas, or a lot of urban or gravel areas, this chart will temporarily read too fast when you are in these slower-speed areas. This is when I “leave” the paper chart and instead rely more on the arrival times shown in the Streets & Trips directions pane. As you’ll see later, we will adjust the riding pace in Streets and Trips according to your general pace. In other words, there is a Plan B and we’ll show you how it works.

Caution 2: EzChart is a general guide. Don’t get too cocky. While EzChart often is right on the money, it only is meant to put you in the ballpark, and to help you decide if you are generally on your pace, behind your pace, or ahead of your pace. Use this information to make decisions while you are riding your route. Once underway, it is expected that you will be continuously analyzing and fine-tuning your progress. Check your GPS while riding to determine if you will arrive at bonuses according to plan. If you remain in your “ballpark,” you should be able to bag the timed bonuses along your route. That’s the whole idea, right there. That, and to help you plan your route as quickly as possible, when you are tired and stressed and feel like crying or hitting someone.

What’s on the chart

At first, the two paper charts (one for each leg) look like a mess. Soon they will make sense. They are meant to be intuitive to use. With a little practice, your eyes will find the critical data.

Look at EzChart prepared for Leg 1 of the 2011 IBR. At the upper right you’ll see the total hours of the leg (83).  We lose three hours because of time zones, so now we have 80. I’m planning four hours of sleep per night, for three nights, so that reduces our time on the bike to 68 driving hours.

Below that is a three-column chart that lists mileages for the leg if ridden at different speeds. Those mileages are flanked by two columns of mph averages that you need to understand and keep in mind.  The overall average is your pace on the leg which includes stops for sleep. The drive average is the speed you will average while actually driving (it seems slow because this number also accounts for stopping to claim bonuses, getting gas, performing bodily functions, picking up tipped over bikes, waiting for your food to arrive at that stupid Casa Bonita bonus near Denver, etc.) Later we’ll tell you how to figure out which pace to pick for you.

You’ll see that the main body of the chart is visually divided by days. I put the days of the week and date above each day because it helps you plan call-in bonuses, or bonuses available on a particular day. Very handy.

If you want, go ahead and write things like the call-in bonuses on the chart during your route-planning, and keep the chart handy while riding to help you remember what day it is (seriously), when to make the call, and of course to help you determine if you are riding your plan. This can be helpful on an 8-day leg, when one day starts blending into another and you are running on half a brain.

Note that below each little tent that defines each day, you’ll see a little “Z”. This is the spot on the time line where I guessed we’ll be crossing into a new time zone.  I had to put them somewhere, and I placed them in a spot that made the best sense, based on that leg.  If you do not make these three time-zone adjustments, the chart will be off by three hours at the end of the rally. Obviously not good.

Note that each vertical line represents four-hour increments. These are actual blocks of time, or “stopwatch” time. Note that the times of day that appear on the horizontal time line do not advance in the exact four-hour increments of 4, 8 and 12. They change because of time zones. Note at the very bottom is a handy reminder about adding an hour to the clock going east, and deleting an hour going west.  Note, by advancing the clock an hour, you lose that hour for riding or sleeping. Easy. Note that I like to use the word note.

Right below the time line, you’ll see a “RIDE HR” line showing hours you will be in the saddle. And below that is a line with little marks “S” and “4” for when you stop to sleep. Note that the riding hours (in the “RIDE HR” line above the sleep line) and the mileages shown below, do not advance when you are sleeping.

Here’s a tip. I didn’t write the mileages horizontally on the line that corresponds to time above. It was too hard and took too much space to write them that way, so I wrote them sideways. Call me names, but let me explain. Look at the chart and find the first “M” (midnight) between days 1 and 2. Now rotate the piece of paper so the shorter edge of the left-hand side of the paper is at the bottom. Follow that line below the “M” and you’ll see at the 45 mph speed column it reads “741.” That’s it. No tricks. Your eye will get used to looking immediately to the right of the vertical line to see the miles for a given time. It’s not perfect, but I found this method the most easy on the eyes.

Below the horizontal time line you’ll see mileages based on five different OVERALL AVE speeds. At the 45 mph overall average speed (shown in the vertical column on the far left), you need to have a drive average of 52.9 mph in order to go 3,600 miles on the first leg (this data is quickly found in the columns on the right side of the EzChart sheet). Therefore, the odometer mileages listed for that speed increase or accumulate at the rate based on your driving average (on the chart, in this example, each line would represent four hours of driving at 52.9 mph). Another way to say it is that the mileages advance based on your speed while actually driving, not the average that combines driving and sleeping.

And at the very bottom, you will see a time line showing Pacific Coast time. This is there because the times shown in the Streets and Trips “directions” panel are always based on the time zone in which you start. The mapping program does not automatically change times when you enter a new zone (would be nice if they did, that’s for sure, and I’ve told them so).

How to pick your pace (and not your nose)

Which overall pace should you pick?  This is the million-dollar question. A 47 mph overall average sounds slow for the first leg, but you can see in the chart on the right side of the sheet that 47mph overall (including sleep) will give you 3,760 miles.  This is not a shabby pace. If you do a 47 overall pace on both legs in the 2011 rally, you’ll ride 11,797 miles.  You can scoop up lots of points in 11,797 miles.

The best method I can think of to determine YOUR pace is to analyze your past rally legs (if you’ve done them). This is reality for you, not what you hope to do, and it accounts for all the screwy stuff that happens during rallies.  I find it is really hard to argue with reality. I found my pace to be pretty consistent over 25,000 miles of my past IBR routes that I’ve been able to analyze. I don’t want to suggest here a pace for you to ride; that’s your decision.

To help you make that decision, you also can analyze the pace ridden by other rally riders. This info is available, for example, on the IBA web site. The method is described below. If you think you’ll be riding faster than speeds shown on the two EzChart sheets, you’ll need to make your own chart, which is easy once you grasp the principles. (And if you ride much over 56 for an overall average, consider packing bail money.)

One reason EzChart lists both overall mph averages and drive mph averages is for comparison purposes. It’s fairly easy to determine the overall averages for other riders. Comparing these averages is fun for rally geeks who have no social life, and gives you a sense for the kind of pace it takes to do well in the rally. The IBA web site lists the miles ridden per leg of past rally finishers. If you know the rider’s total mileage per leg or rally, divide those miles by the available drive hours; the result is the rider’s overall pace. It’s more risky trying to figure out the driving-hour  pace of other riders, because you don’t know how many hours they stopped for sleep.

Figuring out your pace and sticking to it will increase your chances of riding your plan. Riding your plan will increase your chances of bagging the timed bonuses. But there is another reason; your selected pace is used to adjust Streets and Trips settings to give you estimated drive times based on your pre-determined pace. Here’s how:

Adjusting Streets and Trips to Match Your Pace

This process is both art and science. It is worth it because by making adjustments to Streets and Trips, you can more closely match your Streets and Trips route plan to the overall average that you are using on EzChart.  Remember my caution, this is ballpark stuff; making the adjustments can keep you in the ballpark better than not making the adjustments.

Some of this will sound a little complicated. It’s not, or I couldn’t have figured it out. You’ll see that this process isn’t perfect but pretty good, and being aware of how Streets and Trips varies speeds within the same route is a good thing. In the end, and this is important, we will be using the mapping program’s ability to “think” about the different rates of speeds on different kinds of roads. What I’m going to say below is based on the averages of many tests of various routes. Also, it doesn’t replace fine-tuning your pace with your GPS when you are actually riding the route.

To get started, open Streets and Trips and click on “More Options” at the bottom of the Route Planner pane (bottom left of the screen). At the “Profile” page, enter 10 a.m. in the “Start Driving At.” Also enter 10 a.m. in the “End driving at” box. This is the start time of the first leg of the 2011 IBR. (For the second leg, I’m putting 8 a.m. in both of these windows. We get the rally data for the second leg at 4 a.m. and this gives us four hours for route planning and loading the bike.)  Put “none” in the “Flexibility” box.

Now open the “Driving Speed” page.  I’m going to describe options for moving those arrows to the left (slower) and right (faster). The default is in the middle. Also, I move all five arrows to the same position, just because. I will call those things that you can move “arrows.” I will call those little marks below the arrows as “notches.”

You might ask: Why don’t they just put the mph on this page, rather than “slower” or “average” or “faster.” The reason is because this is not a constant. Streets and Trips predicts faster speeds on freeways, slower speeds on dirt roads. To illustrate this, leave those arrows in the middle. Now try a 5,000-mile route that is mostly on freeways. Now try a 5,000-mile route on dirt roads. The average mph will be far higher on the freeway, even though you left those arrows on the same notches.

I will list a number of observations I have found regarding where to put those arrows. I think the following information is worth the price of admission alone, at least when it comes to “tuning” Streets and Trips for you.

• Putting the arrow one notch from the left gives you what amounts to a 55.5 driving average (47 mph overall average) IF the route is mostly in the U.S., (a little of Canada is OK), and on a typical mix of roads. This might be the kind of route we’ll see on Leg 1 of the 2011 IBR. Or not.
• Based on the above, and based the chart of the right side of EzChart,  if you want to cover roughly 3800 miles in 68 driving hours, then you would put the arrow at one notch from the left. (Of course, you need to put the arrow on the notch that fits you. I’m just sayin’.)
• Moving the arrow one notch to the right is about the same as increasing your speed by 2 mph. (On our second leg in the 2011 IBR, 2 mph results in a difference of more than 350 miles.) This 2 mph is not exact, but is the average based on many tests. You can move the arrow half a notch (in other words, between two notches) and that corresponds to 1 mph.
• Leaving the arrow in the default (middle) position is, in scientific terms, a pretty darn fast pace. It’s close to the pace predicted by a 2610. Most riders can maintain or beat that pace if there is plenty of freeway and not a lot of stops for getting bonuses. On a pure freeway test in the Midwest, using an identical route, the middle notch in Street and Trips predicts a 62.6 driving average and the 2610 predicts 62.8. If you check the EzChart data on the right side of the sheet, you’ll see that 62.8 driving speed corresponds to an overall average of about 53. To put that in perspective, leaving the arrow on the middle (default) setting and using the similar 2610 prediction would give you more than 13,000 miles for the rally. These numbers will vary a little depending on your route, but are fairly consistent when used on that general mix of U.S. highways.
• Streets and Trips’ speed predictions really “slow down” on many Canadian roads. The main drag between Winnipeg and Edmonton is similar to the U.S. pace, but especially the north-south roads in Canada can drop 5 mph to 10 mph from the predicted U.S. pace. (I haven’t tested this on the road, but my plan is that if a rally route is mostly in Canada, I will move the arrow two notches faster in the planning process in order to arrive at what I think are real-life speeds.)
• To illustrate the above, here are the results of a 1,300-mile Canada-only route, leaving from Buffalo, N.Y., heading east to Thunder Bay, then north to Thompson and Flyn Flon. All roads are paved. If the Streets and Trips speed-setting arrow is placed one notch from the left, it gives you an estimated drive speed for the Canadian route of 47 mph. That same route on U.S. highways would give you an estimated drive speed of about 55.4. If you move the speed-setting arrow to the middle position, Streets and Trips will increase its Canada road speed prediction to 53.3, which now is much closer to the U.S. pace.  I don’t mean to keep hammering on this, but the potential for Canadian bonuses on both legs of the 2011 IBR is good. And of course I’m not sayin’ how fast you should choose to ride in Canada.
• The 2610 doesn’t slow you down (in terms of predicted speeds) nearly so much on Canadian roads.

Again, it helps to practice routing and determine for yourself what kind of average speeds you will get on a route for the number of hours allowed. Some tips on how that works comes up next. But first, let’s pause for a:

Time-out Note: Up to this point, everything described so far can be done ahead of time, weeks and months before the start of the rally. I recommend doing practice routes, and doing them at several different speed settings in Streets and Trips, and getting a feel for how dramatically the mileages can change with different speed settings in the mapping program and using the different paces found on EzChart. This helps you wrap your head around what it takes to solve the mind-blowing challenge of coming up with a good route plan.  Also, it is totally expected that you will think that some of what is being described here is stupid, and you will come up with something that is a little or a lot different. That’s perfect; it means you are coming up with something that works best for how your brain works. Finally, I will admit that the actual process of sitting in front of the computer to practice routes (and not just practice loading data) is challenging and not a whole lot of fun. Even brushing your teeth is more fun. However, I have found it to be the single-best investment of time if your goal is to be a good route-planner. If the only result of getting you to study EzChart is try practice routes, that’s a good thing.Time-out over.

Building a route

Now, the fun part begins. You have some powerful and realistic tools to figure out a route that will work for you, not someone else.

I won’t go into methods to figure out a route; we all want to figure out how to get the most points in the hours we are given. Go for a few big ones, or string together a clever bunch of medium ones? The top riders manage to do both, which is why they win. But look at the IBA 5000 win by John Coons in 2010.  He rode fewer miles but collected more medium-point bonuses than riders who bagged fewer but higher-point bonuses, but who also rode monster miles.  One of the goals of EzBake and EzChart are to give you the tools to figure out the more complex routes rather than just go for the big points. If you use these tools to beat the crap out of Coons, go for it.  Seriously, this is the point where we are going to combine the strengths of EzChart and Streets and Trips.

Riders without these tools will tend to come up with a route based on a predicted number of miles. I suggest that basing a route on hours allowed per leg (and predicted by Streets and Trips) will in the end give you a reality-based route that holds up from start to finish.

I also like to try out several routes and compare them before committing to a final choice. Using the EzChart will speed up your “first stab” at a route. That’s why I created it in the first place.

When building a route in Streets and Trips, as you progress from bonus to bonus, you must check to check to see if you’ll arrive at timed bonuses at the right time, or at least within a window of possibility. If you were to rely only on Streets and Trips to test a route (before EzChart) you would need to add your sleep stops to the route, plus the time zone changes.  This is especially true after the first couple of days of a leg. It doesn’t take a lot of time to add a sleep stop to your route in Streets and Trips, but if the route isn’t working out, and you want to head in a new direction, you have to go back and strip out the sleep stops and add them in new places. Now this is starting to get messy and time-consuming. Ick.

Instead of adding and/or deleting all those sleep stops into your Streets and Trips route plan, you don’t have to. At least not at this point in the process. For now, pay no attention to the arrival times listed in the “instruction” pane at the top of the Streets and Trips map. Instead, just click on the bonus pushpin (or click on it within the “route planner” pane) and check the mileage given for that location that appears in the “instructions” pane. Now look for that corresponding mileage on EzChart (in the column for the pace you’ve pre-selected to ride).  Look up to the timeline and you’ll get a general idea of what time you’ll arrive at that bonus. Remember, the timeline is designed to give you local times, and it already has taken into account your sleep stops.

If the time of arrival for a bonus doesn’t look like it will work for you, there is still a chance you can make it work by moving your four-hour block of sleep time forward or backward. For example, EzChart might show you arriving at a fat bonus at 2 a.m., but the bonus is daylight only.  But wait, there’s hope.  Plan to start your sleep when you get to the bonus, or before you get there, and then you can wake up and get the bonus photo at sunrise.

You don’t need to take a sleep bonus at the time shown in Ezbake or exactly four hours every night. But if you take five hours one night, consider taking three hours the next. Sticking to your general sleep-hour amounts over the course of the leg will give you the best time predictions toward the end of the leg.

As you continue to plan your route, it is important to get it finish showing the number of drive hours available for the leg. Don’t worry so much about the total miles of your route as the drive hours. Total miles is a crap shoot, while drive hours is reality. I put my money on reality. For the first leg of 2011, for example, try to get your route to end at 68 hours. This will be listed as “driving time” at the bottom of the Streets and Trips routing directions. (And by the way, if you end your route at 68 drive hours, and you add the 12 sleep hours, and make the three time-zone adjustments, you will find that the “Trip Duration” will come to 83 hours, which is the total hours we have for the leg.)

While this will seem obvious, it is worth noting that unless time-zone adjustments are made (more on that soon) the arrival time shown in the “directions” pane will be off by three hours because Streets and Trips is still telling you Pacific Coast Time, not Eastern Time.

After several attempts, you will start to settle on a route, especially if it looks good compared to others, and the hours are close to that magic “68.” And remember, that’s 68 hours based on your speed setting in “options,” and based on Streets and Trips ability to adjust its predicted speeds based on the kind of roads on your route.

Fine Tuning

Now is when you can fine-tune your route. This takes additional time and it’s up to you if you want to spend the time to get more precise with your plan. The test using the second leg of 2007 is especially good for this discussion.  You will find that Streets and Trips will agree with EzChart really well until you hit the slow and twisty roads in the mountains of California. At that point, EzChart is less help. That’s exactly what you need to see. This is where you shift to the ability of Streets and Trips to “think.”

The goal at this point in the process is to now  get the arrival times shown in the Streets and Trips “direction” pane to match local-time reality. This is the first time in this process you need to do this, and you want to do it to confirm that you’ll arrive at timed bonuses at the right time.

To get the direction-pane arrival times to match reality, you will need to add sleep stops to your route plan, and you will need to make adjustments for time zones.

Here’s probably the most difficult thing to wrap your head around (based on extensive personal experience), and the process is a little different when heading west than heading east. And this is why I wrote at the bottom of EzChart these two phrases: “East add one hour per time zone” and “West delete one hour.”

For the first leg in the 2011 IBR, you will want to add one hour to your route in three spots. Do it once for each time you cross into a new time zone. I find it easy to add the hour to a four-hour sleep stop somewhere within the new time zone. So, instead of indicating a four-hour stop, enter five hours. Remember, you don’t actually get to sleep that additional hour. It is added for one reason only, and that is to advance the clock within the Streets and Trips “directions” pane, so you can trust those times to indicate if you will be on target according to local times.

If you want to be more precise when going east, you can add a one-hour time-zone stop into your Streets and Trips route at the specific point where you enter the new time zone, and not at a sleep stop. (For Streets and Trips versions 2010 and 2011, there is a free downloadable map that shows the time zones. It works slick. Find it at OnTimeZone.com.) Going west, you only can adjust for time-zone changes by deleting an hour from a sleep stop. This is because you can’t enter a “negative time” to your route, you can only add time.  You accomplish this when going west by entering a “3” for a four-hour sleep stop. This time, you actually get to sleep for the four hours.

OK, guessing where you enter a time-zone change on the chart isn’t perfect and it’s a reality of creating a chart on paper. However, at least you will only be “off” by an hour occasionally, but you won’t be off by three hours at the end of the route, which is a much bigger deal. And remember, this is a ballpark system. Being off an hour occasionally is still staying in the ballpark, but being three hours off is not in the ballpark. And of course, during the course of the rally you are going to run into a million problems that will knock you off your plan by an hour or more. This is why we love rallies and why it’s critical to keep analyzing your pace with your GPS while riding the route.

When fine-tuning your first-first leg route, if you add the correct sleep stops and time zone changes, the predicted times in the Streets and Trips instruction pane should now be close to reality. This is where you focus on making sure you’ll be arriving at each timed bonus correctly. In order to make your route “work” at this point in the process, you can’t change your time zones, but you can make adjustments to your sleeps. For example, you might only stop for two hours one night but six hours the next, if this sets the stage for collecting some huge timed bonuses later.

Another tool to help make a route work is to take a sleep later in the night than usual, or earlier. You could consider stopping for the night at 8 p.m. and getting back on the bike at midnight. Adjusting sleep stops is a terrific tool.

At the end of the “fine-tuned” route for Leg 1, you should have added 12 hours of sleeps plus 3 hours for time zones. At this point, the local times shown in your Streets and Trips directions pane should match reality. If it says you’ll arrive at a daylight bonus at 3 p.m., you shouldn’t be off more than an hour or so in either direction. Finally, when looking at the data at the very bottom of the directions pane, the “driving time” should show 68 hours, and the “trip duration” should be 83 hours. Now you have a route based on Streets and Trips ability to compensate for the speeds on different roads, which in turn is based on your pre-selected pace.

I hope you can see that by allowing Streets and Trips to think about speeds in the twisty mountains of California, you will create a 2007 IBR leg practice route that works for you. The idea, of course, is to reduce the risk of blowing off big bonuses because your route plan was based more on a miles-target  than on the time it takes to ride those miles.

When planning how to solve the “California mountain” puzzle of the 2007 IBR, the last thing you want to do is use the same average speeds you were using while crossing prairie. It won’t work. This is the time to ask Streets and Trips for how long  it will take to ride those mountains.

Now you are at the point of saving your final route. A good investment of five or 10 minutes here is to make a bonus list on paper that you will keep in the map window of your tank bag.  Using the route-planner pane in Streets and Trips, write down the name of the bonus, the points, and the time-availability. Now click on each bonus in your route pane and you will see the time of arrival in your directions pane. Write that down too.

Don’t forget to write down the “call-in” bonus dates, or anything else “weird” you might have to do along the leg.

Keeping this list in your map window will let you keep track of your progress and help you make all of the decisions you will be making while riding. A combination of the list and a copy of your EzChart will help you see if you are on pace. Maybe you can add some more bonuses along the way, or you might have to drop some to get back on track. Either way, having something to look at and analyze while riding will give you a sense of how things are going for you on days five or six, rather than just “hoping for the best.”

EzChart in Excel

This puppy is totally cutting-edge. The final version came to life just a couple of weeks ago. Only a handful of riders, and that would be us, have access to it.

Every concept described above for the paper version of EzChart exists in the Excel version.  It matches the paper version so perfectly it hardly takes any explaining, and thank goodness for that, considering how long this explanation is getting.

The beauty of the Excel version is:

• You can pinpoint the spot of the time-zone change.
• You can pinpoint your sleep stops and you can increase or decrease the number of sleep hours.

The changes are easy. And all the mileages are readjusted for the route instantly. Very powerful.

To change the time-zone hour in EzChart Excel, going east or west, find Line 12 which is labeled “Cross Time Zone (direction)” on the left. Going east, for example, you can delete the “E” if it’s not at the correct time block, and type a new “E” above the correct time block (this is the spot you enter a new time zone). Going west? Enter “W.”

To change the sleep hours, go to the line labeled “Sleep.” You can delete a sleep stop from one time block and enter it somewhere else, and you can change the number of hours for that sleep. Note that if you want to stop for six hours, you put four hours in one time block and two hours in the next time block. This is because, of course, there only are four hours in each of those time blocks. Again, when you hit the “enter” key, all the mileages in the chart will automatically readjust. Wow.

There is one difference to be aware of between Leg 1 and Leg 2 of the paper version, which I will mention here in the discussion about the Excel version. For the first leg, I have three sleep stops of four hours each. For the second leg, each night has a four-hour stop except the last night. For that “home stretch” night, I’ve reduced the sleep stop to just 2 hours. I’ll leave it up to you if you really want to take them. I mention this here, because if you want the paper and Excel versions to match perfectly, you’d need to enter 2 hours for sleep on the last night.

Final thoughts

I’m certain some of these instructions will appear confusing at first blush. The best way to make sense of them is to use them while you do practice routes. For me, figuring out EzBake took a long time the first time I did it. Now it’s a snap. EzChart is the same. The first few times you use EzChart, you’ll be trying to figure out what the heck I’m talking about.  But after a few times, you won’t even think about the directions any more.

As I’ve mentioned, this process might not work for you, and you’ll come up with something better. However, getting you think about how to determine your pace, how to develop a realistic mileage goal for a leg, and how to plan a route that helps you arrive at timed bonuses correctly, is only a good thing.