The beauty is in the difficulty….
– Unknown
There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
– Melville
I always like to say that if you don’t have a plan you don’t have anything. I also say that if you don’t have a plan then you have nothing to deviate from. Additionally… those that live by the plan also can die by the plan… I guess I say a lot of things…
Some folks can just wing it… or ‘cowboy’ things as they go along. And although I am a huge fan of cowboying stuff, I am also a big fan of being prepared. I spent decades managing high value, complex projects and programmes. Hard to believe right? This is really no different. From the get-go I treated this the same way, and as such, I pulled out a whole bunch of project management tools to assist me. It won’t hurt my feelings any if you aren’t interested in any of this, but for sake of completeness I am going to record that stuff here. Feel free to skip to, or wait for the next installment.
One of the first things they teach you in project management school is the value of a Mission Statement, and/or Vision Statement. This is to provide unambiguous clarity of purpose. A North Star if you will. Something that points directly to the goal. Speaking of goals…another favourite of project managers the world over is what are called SMART goals. It stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound. Specific sort of points back to the mission statement somewhat. In other words… what exactly are we trying to achieve, in as plain as words as possible. Measurable refers to a couple of things: how are you going to measure your progress, and how will you know when you are done. The latter hopefully is going to be apparent. Attainable means… can you actually do what you are trying to do, or is it some fool’s errand that has a cat’s chance in hell of succeeding. Relevant is a bit trickier to define, and I usually reserve its use to sub-tasks in the overall project. i.e. is the thing you are doing actually going to contribute positively to the desired outcome. You would be surprised at how many times it isn’t. Lastly we have Time-bound. The goal (or tasks) can’t really be open ended. There needs to be a defined start, and a defined finish.
Sometimes a well worded mission statement incorporates some or maybe all of the SMART goals.
Starting on the South rim on May 22nd, 2024 we will safely complete the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim crossing, via the South Kaibab, North Kaibab, and Bright Angel trails, finishing on May 23rd. Our planned round trip time is between 12 and 18 hours.
So… you got your mission defined. You have ensured that yours is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and has a realistic timeframe. What’s next? Well, now it’s time to look at your resources and constraints. A very nifty way to start this is with what’s called a SWOT analysis. These chuckleheads sure like their acronyms… SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. What does this look like you ask?
Strengths should be self explanatory. It’s just a list of all of the positive things you have going for you. Weaknesses should likewise be easy to understand. What are the chinks in the armor. The other two categories are a bit more difficult to grasp. Opportunities describes identifiable things that you might be able to tap into somehow. While strengths are things you already have, stuff that’s intrinsic or already built in. Opportunities are things that you might need to seek out and implement. Threats are typically thought of as external forces or vectors that you may not have easy control over, yet you need to be aware of them and possibly have contingencies for. Basically Force Majeure.
A Timeline is important to keep training and logistics on track. It helps to identify and prioritize competing goals and activities. I got timelines up the wazoo. From 50,000’ macros all the down to daily and even hourly micro planning. Overkill perhaps. These types of projects can grow all sorts of arms and legs.
A Training Tracker is also a type of timeline, but one that gets deep into the details of the effectiveness of the training. Coupled with the overall timeline it is indispensable in helping to identify training preparedness and for making any needed course corrections. I’ve also got training trackers up the wazoo as well. Even more of these suckers. I have several overall ones and then drill-down ones for each of the training modalities. Reps, sets, interval times, distances, splits, heart rates, weights, bodyweight, all meticulously planned and recorded. I probably even have trackers to track my trackers…
On the flip side of all these charts and graphs is another phenomenon that can be kinda insidious and prevalent and that’s… paralysis by analysis. Because of course, all the timelines and trackers in the world mean fuck all if you aren’t out there actually doing the hard work required.
(one of many)
Team video calls are something we instituted early on. We set aside an hour or so every week just to touch base. We would go over any injuries someone might have, how our individual training was coming along, the schedule and logistics, and of course gear and nutrition planning. Most of all though, the calls are just plain fun. Lots of kibitzing, and plenty of gallows humour. It’s pretty easy to sit back in the sunshine with a nice coffee in your hand and poke fun at or pick holes in the exploits of others who have done this. There are legions of YouTube videos of jamokes doing the R3.
The last topic in last week’s team call, and in this installment update is Contingency Planning. Nobody wants to go into something thinking about failure. The reality of any given situation however can be very different. The devout in the audience will tell you something along the lines of… ‘Man plans, God laughs’. One can’t plan for every conceivable outcome, but one can train and plan in such a way as to be highly flexible in their reaction to inevitable changes. It’s of course difficult, if not outright impossible to divine every possibility that could arise. The one very real issue, is the same one that I faced last year; that being trail closures. We will be keeping a very close watch on the NPS website to monitor conditions. I suppose that another possibility might be if we have a heavy snow year, and the north rim trails become impassable without some kind of heroics. The mean maximum snowpack on the north rim on 23 May is something like 0.2 inches. That being said the record depth for that date is 9 inches, and the current snowpack as I write this in mid- January is around 10 inches.
On our most recent call we tasked ourselves with identifying some alternatives if something came up that prevented us from our plan. Caleb got right on that and sent us a video of some jabronis doing the crossing via the south and north Bass trails. This involves swimming the river in each direction….
I believe in being independent of my future.
– Messner
Luck is what you find at the crossroads of circumstance and preparation.
– unknown