The Spreadsheet of Accountability

 In 2016 I started keeping a record of how far I swam at each session, just using some grid paper pulled out of a refill pad.  I had a very rudimentary spreadsheet, into which I'd enter the information, and get a total for each month. I think sometime in the third quarter of the year I set a goal of swimming *at least* 10km per week. At this point I wasn't really doing much open-water swimming, just two sessions with a masters club, one technique session with a tri/multisport club, and maybe one other swim a week. I remember doing a couple of 4km solo swims at Freyberg and thinking that was a long way. How things have changed.

I continued the same refill pad/rudimentary spreadsheet plan through 2017, and 2018, and indeed 2019 ...or most of it. Then there came a time in 2019 when Rebecca and Bre were starting to accelerate their training (fairly rapidly) for their Lake Taupo 40.2km swim in January 2020.  They decided to use a shared spreadsheet for recording their daily swim distances, and also would use the sheet to plan their weekly swims, entering the planned swims in red type, and then what actually happened in black. As I was often swimming with them, I was included in this early iteration of the spreadsheet. It also recorded weekly and monthly totals.

After their momentous and triumphant crossing of the lake in late January, they needed a little rest, and Bre was moving to the south island to study. I had developed some fondness for the spreadsheet, and continued to enter my swims into it, as did Rebecca.  As I was training for the 2020 Chopper Swim (which, dedicated readers will recall, was cancelled as we entered the time of Covid19) the spreadsheet was a handy place to plan and record my week's work.  At the same time, somebody involved with the Outdoor Swimmer magazine had developed a challenge called A Million Metres in 2020. This involved another spreadsheet (and a Facebook group). This spreadsheet was somewhat more detailed than our one, with a separate tab for each month. The sheet also handily told you how much you needed to swim per week to get to 1,000,000 metres (or 1,000km) by the end of the year: 83.3km per month, and how much you needed to swim each week to make that total.  I think swimming six days per week meant averaging 3.2km daily). I then had TWO spreadsheets to play with: great fun. I had great totals in January and February, tapered for Chopper (which didn't happen) and then lockdown hit. Looking at the spreadsheet was quite depressing at that point. However, as I've written elsewhere, in the end, I did do more than 1,000km so it all came right in the end. 

When two more swimmers began training for Taupo, they were also inducted into Rebecca's original spreadsheet, in the 2020-2021 tab, and for some reason, I said one morning that it was called The Spreadsheet of Accountability as we can all see each other's plans and totals. It's motivational, if occasionally chastening. 

As I like planning and recording things, these spreadsheets are excellent tools for working out what I want to do/have time to do each week. It's always good when I manage to exceed the planned amount, and chastening when I don't. As you can see, we each have a colour-coded column, and do delightful things, such as including humorous notes in the right-most column and highlight people's massive achievements.

Anyway, to wrap up a not-very-exciting post, the point here is that keeping records is great. It helps to plan training and record training, and you can look back on it and feel self-satisfied about great deeds done.