Very interesting. I ran it sept 2019 from clinton to machens. Made it 72 miles first day which got me into south booneville - hotel right near the trail. 2nd night was a shelter nap at Tebbets and 3rd night 2 hours sleep in my nephews van at Augusta. 3 day 10 hours (was an FKT at the time) Amazing memorable run. The Katy is a true gem. 😀🏃♂️🏃♂️
Yeah, pretty dorky even by my standards. Also I made a packing list video before my last Katy trip. Not my best work but could be helpful. th-cam.com/video/tTAFU48bBz4/w-d-xo.html
Very cool. Thank you!! I have a suggestion for improvement. Maybe have a separate start time for each day. I know I try to time my arrival at my hotel around check-in. On days that I might only ride 40 miles (which would be 3.5 - 4 hours), that could have me arriving before noon if I start at 7:30. If I start at 10:00, take breaks and lunch then I would be arriving around 3:30-4:00.
Thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps I didn't point it out, but you actually can override the default day start time just by typing the time you wish to start in the cell. Each individual row calculates the ETA time based on the ETD time from the cell above, based on the miles of distance between the above row and your average predicted MPH. But you can always just type in a date/time in the ETA cell, and everything below will calculate based on that, up until you type "Overnight" in the break cell, then it resets the date/time of the following row according to the next date and the default start time from the top (which again you can override). Let me know if you need more help figuring that out, I'd be happy to help.
Planning a trip for June and this is invaluable to running different scenarios in my favorite platform. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. You rock!
Great! Thanks for the feedback, glad it helped. I'm planning on going East to West in mid May. Watch for a video after then. Let me know if you have any questions.
Great video. Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet. We will certainly use it for our planning. Any suggestions on what time of year is best for the trip? I’m leaning toward a fall trip, thorns be damned… But spring could also be appealing.
Yeah, I'd say April, May, September, or October are your best bets. Summer is quite humid in Missouri and can be pretty miserable. Also be aware Missouri State Parks turns off the water in winter so be aware of that. I've done the Katy end to end probably a dozen times and had a flat one time but it was a double flat situation due to thorns. Run tubeless and/or bring two or more tubes would be my advice. Be prepared but your odds of making it without flats are pretty decent no matter the time of year.
Great! I've watched lots of Katy Trail videos to prepare for my own trip. I was actually thinking of doing a spreadsheet something like this to get a better feel for how my daily progress would look. Now, thanks to you, I don't have to do that. I really like that you put in links to each stop along the way, and the services that I can expect at each. Now I have to get a bike... my road bike would like to have a gravel/hybrid little brother. Thanks for sharing.
You're very welcome. Let me know if you have any questions or problems. And as I said in the video, please do double check to make sure the services that the spreadsheet say are there are still open/available for your ride. I'd hate to have people counting on camping or something and then pull up at sunset to find it closed!
Awesome. So glad you like it. It could pretty easily be adapted to another trail system, you'd just have to replace the mile post numbers and obviously the names of the trailheads, and then all the math should work.
Hello! Yes, depending on your physical abilities of course, it is possible to do it in 2.5 days. If you actually go end to end (Clinton to Machens) it's 237 miles, so like two 100 mile days and one 40 mile day. That would be a big effort. 100 miles on the Katy is quite a bit harder than 100 miles on a road bike because of the slow crushed limestone surface. If you start at Sedalia (where the western most Amtrak station is) instead of Clinton you'll save 35 miles off those totals. And if you end at St. Charles, you'd save another 12 miles over going all the way to Machens (it's pretty desolate between St. Charles and Machens). So it kind of depends on how you define "complete" the trail, but even if that means end to end 237 miles, it's possible, but again...it's gonna be tough! Definitely don't try to do it in the middle of hot summer!
To prove it's possible, here is a video where I biked from Sedalia to St. Louis (past Machens) so about 220 miles over 2 days. But again, it was hard! th-cam.com/video/4GB3hCn1Ilw/w-d-xo.html
sadly the spreadsheet is no longer available not sure if this is something that can be fixed but this would prove invaluable to me as im planning my ride for this summer sometime
Great tool, I've done the katy several times. However, always looking for more in depth planning processes... I not been able to download and an excuteable copy of it to my computer. Obviously my computer skills are lacking, help....
Sorry, I didn't see your comment until just now. Yeah, it's a little hacky, but yes, there is the hidden tab that I think I got from NOAA that calculates sunrise sunset for a given lat/long. That's the yellow highlighted cells on the NOAA tab. If you put in the lat/long for the city you want (I used Jefferson City MO about in the middle of the trail), it uses some crazy formulas to calculate the sunrise and sunset times for that lat long (columns Y and Z respectively) and then the formulas in the non-hidden tabs just do a vlookup to that table. As I remember the year was needed to match the NOAA table...but I didn't want to try to pass the year over to the table, so there is just an assumption that it's 2020 since I don't think it matters much what year a given date is, the sunrise/sunset times should be basically the same, with maybe the exception of leap years? I'm not sure, but I figured it was close enough. Does that help at all? Sorry, it's hard to explain and I don't know if I totally remember how I did it!
@@dherholz Do you know of a loop that would be St Charles / Wood River / Old Chain of Rocks Bridge / back to St Louis? I am coming from Anchorage, don't know the area and had heard there is some Lewis and Clark history there I should see.
I would be happy to help you figure up a route. One of my favorite routes in St. Louis is a century ride I do every year that goes through several of your targets. 100 miles may be more than you're looking for, especially if you're going to stop to take in history...but if you're truly wanting to loop from St. Charles and hit St. Louis it's going to be close to that distance. But maybe use this route as a starter and let me know if you have any questions. www.strava.com/activities/6285277278
I don't. But you're welcome to download the spreadsheet and try to adapt it, if you're Excel savvy. The main thing is to change the mile posts and the names of the trailheads (of course), and it should work for that. It just calculates the time based on your speed and the miles from the last trailhead, and works down the rows.
Hi CARDS. So, each date/time cell refers to the cell above it. So what I'd suggest is decide where you want to do your overnights and type "overnight" in the break type column (G). Then, on the row below your overnight stay, type in the date/time you want to start that day in the ETA column (F). Then the rest of the spreadsheet should behave the way you want it to. You just won't be able to make changes to any of the "Overnight" cells after that since you would have hard coded a date/time in ETA. Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you have questions.
I love this. Thanks for sharing. One question. On the overnight function, is the function for the arrival time in the next town incorrect? It seems it defaults to the leave time at the top of the spreadsheet but doesn't factor in the time it would take to leave the overnight town and pedal to the next town. Or am I overthinking this?? No matter what, great tool!
You're right! I never noticed that before somehow. The ETD should reflect the time you leave the next morning (defaulting to the time specified at the top) and then the next town's ETA of course should be based on that overnight town's ETD. How silly of me. Thanks for pointing that out!
Thank you so much!! I am just starting the planning process for the first time on the this trail, and this will be so helpful. Quick question....I am not very adept at Excel, how do I go about adjusting individual daily start times? Any help would be appreciated!
Hello from the Katy trail! I'm using WiFi at a cafe in Rocheport, half way through a 4 day trip end to end. Anyway, if you want to change a start time you can simply overwrite that cell with your date/time. So like "7/1/22 7:15 am". All cells below it will look to the cell above to get its start time. It will then reset on the next day when you type "overnight" to the default start time at the top.
Thank you so much for creating and sharing this- it was incredibly helpful for planning our first full Katy Trail ride! I’m now attempting to adapt it for the Erie Canalway trail…
No, not at most, only a couple that I found. Most have no electricity/lighting at all and a few don't even have plumbing (compost toilets). Bike charging can be a bit difficult on the Katy in my experience. I did a video on an ebike trip on the Katy and showed a few options I had found.
I think April is a great time to go. I don't have a lot of data handy on rainfall but I don't consider April to be particularly wet. The temps are pretty ideal though!
@ I have now ridden the Erie, OTET (both someone else planned) and I did the GAP/C&O with a different friend (I did the planning). We do a long route about once a year. I like your planner, one as cyclist the other as an analyst that loves a good Excel spreadsheet. I did send your video to our group planner. Thanks
The purpose of this isn't where you're going, but rather when you will get there. And when you know arrival times, that can help you plan where you're going to have lunch and camp for the night.
For sure. I hate rolling friction! But, I'm sure the cost of making a 237 mile paved trail would not be feasible. So, I'd rather have crushed limestone than nothing.
I have never commented on a TH-cam, but this is so good! Thank you!
Excellent resource 👏🏾 beginner friendly. Thank you for sharing & tutorial.
You have provided a fantastic tool for so many. Thank you.
Dude, this is amazing. Thank you for giving your time and energy to the cycling community!
Thanks, so glad you found it helpful!
WOW what a really great tool!!! THANKS for sharing!
You're welcome. Glad you found it helpful
Very interesting. I ran it sept 2019 from clinton to machens. Made it 72 miles first day which got me into south booneville - hotel right near the trail. 2nd night was a shelter nap at Tebbets and 3rd night 2 hours sleep in my nephews van at Augusta. 3 day 10 hours (was an FKT at the time) Amazing memorable run. The Katy is a true gem. 😀🏃♂️🏃♂️
Holy jeez that's amazing. I can't imagine running that far. It's long enough on a bike. Nice job!
What a great resource! Thank you for making it available - it's really helped me visualize my trip before heading out!
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for letting me know.
This is so incredible! I’ve been struggling with planning my first ride of the Katy Trail and this has been extremely helpful!!
Yay! Happy to hear that. Let me know if you have any Katy trip questions, happy to answer them.
Thanks for putting together such a great spreadsheet! Using it to plan a spring ride on the Katy Trail!
Awesome. Good luck and just let me know if you have any questions
Awesome content Dave. I’m not surprised you made a spreadsheet!! Great stuff!
Yeah, pretty dorky even by my standards. Also I made a packing list video before my last Katy trip. Not my best work but could be helpful. th-cam.com/video/tTAFU48bBz4/w-d-xo.html
The world would fall apart without the talents of dorky people! Appreciate the videos! They have been fun watching
Very cool. Thank you!!
I have a suggestion for improvement. Maybe have a separate start time for each day. I know I try to time my arrival at my hotel around check-in. On days that I might only ride 40 miles (which would be 3.5 - 4 hours), that could have me arriving before noon if I start at 7:30. If I start at 10:00, take breaks and lunch then I would be arriving around 3:30-4:00.
Thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps I didn't point it out, but you actually can override the default day start time just by typing the time you wish to start in the cell. Each individual row calculates the ETA time based on the ETD time from the cell above, based on the miles of distance between the above row and your average predicted MPH. But you can always just type in a date/time in the ETA cell, and everything below will calculate based on that, up until you type "Overnight" in the break cell, then it resets the date/time of the following row according to the next date and the default start time from the top (which again you can override). Let me know if you need more help figuring that out, I'd be happy to help.
Thank you so much for this great tool and the advice!
Absolutely. Let me know if you have any Katy questions.
Great spreadsheet. Thanks for making it and letting me download it.
You're welcome!
Thank you very much for this valuable information.
Great idea.. Excellent Job !!.. Lots of great info.. I'm not from the area.. so now I can get a visual on what to expect.. Pedal On !!
Awesome. Just let me know if I can answer any questions. I love the Katy trail!
@@dherholz Absolutely 🚴♂️🏕🍺
Planning a trip for June and this is invaluable to running different scenarios in my favorite platform. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. You rock!
Great! Thanks for the feedback, glad it helped. I'm planning on going East to West in mid May. Watch for a video after then. Let me know if you have any questions.
My 3rd trip coming up 6/18 -6/20 East to West. Love a great spreadsheet. Looking forward to trying yours out. Thanks.
Great video. Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet. We will certainly use it for our planning. Any suggestions on what time of year is best for the trip? I’m leaning toward a fall trip, thorns be damned… But spring could also be appealing.
Yeah, I'd say April, May, September, or October are your best bets. Summer is quite humid in Missouri and can be pretty miserable. Also be aware Missouri State Parks turns off the water in winter so be aware of that. I've done the Katy end to end probably a dozen times and had a flat one time but it was a double flat situation due to thorns. Run tubeless and/or bring two or more tubes would be my advice. Be prepared but your odds of making it without flats are pretty decent no matter the time of year.
Thank you. very helpful. I'm riding from San Diego to Macomb, Il, so I'm inspired to try to make one of these for the entire trip!
Great, good luck. You should be able to just change the mile posts and the "trailhead name" columns and the math should work for calculating times.
Great! I've watched lots of Katy Trail videos to prepare for my own trip. I was actually thinking of doing a spreadsheet something like this to get a better feel for how my daily progress would look. Now, thanks to you, I don't have to do that. I really like that you put in links to each stop along the way, and the services that I can expect at each. Now I have to get a bike... my road bike would like to have a gravel/hybrid little brother. Thanks for sharing.
You're very welcome. Let me know if you have any questions or problems. And as I said in the video, please do double check to make sure the services that the spreadsheet say are there are still open/available for your ride. I'd hate to have people counting on camping or something and then pull up at sunset to find it closed!
Any other vids on this trail you liked?
Awesome tool David! Thanks for your work!
You're welcome. Glad it could help.
Thank you for sharing, a great resource
As one who has done the Katy this is an incredible tool. Now someone needs to make it into a free app like the C&O Canal Trail (Maryland)
Awesome. So glad you like it. It could pretty easily be adapted to another trail system, you'd just have to replace the mile post numbers and obviously the names of the trailheads, and then all the math should work.
Next level Excel skills! Thank you
Thank you! Hope it helps you!
if minimizing overnight sleep is it reasonable to complete in 2.5 days?
Hello! Yes, depending on your physical abilities of course, it is possible to do it in 2.5 days. If you actually go end to end (Clinton to Machens) it's 237 miles, so like two 100 mile days and one 40 mile day. That would be a big effort. 100 miles on the Katy is quite a bit harder than 100 miles on a road bike because of the slow crushed limestone surface. If you start at Sedalia (where the western most Amtrak station is) instead of Clinton you'll save 35 miles off those totals. And if you end at St. Charles, you'd save another 12 miles over going all the way to Machens (it's pretty desolate between St. Charles and Machens). So it kind of depends on how you define "complete" the trail, but even if that means end to end 237 miles, it's possible, but again...it's gonna be tough! Definitely don't try to do it in the middle of hot summer!
To prove it's possible, here is a video where I biked from Sedalia to St. Louis (past Machens) so about 220 miles over 2 days. But again, it was hard! th-cam.com/video/4GB3hCn1Ilw/w-d-xo.html
Awesome video!
Thanks!
sadly the spreadsheet is no longer available not sure if this is something that can be fixed but this would prove invaluable to me as im planning my ride for this summer sometime
This is AMAZING!! Thanks a ton!
You're welcome!
Nice sheet and I will use in the future. Thanks!
Happy to help
@@dherholz I tried to down load the sheet on my computer and the link times out. Can you send me the spreadsheet?
Sure. Want to send me a gmail? account is dherholz
This is amazing! Thank you so much.
You're so welcome!
Great tool, I've done the katy several times. However, always looking for more in depth planning processes... I not been able to download and an excuteable copy of it to my computer. Obviously my computer skills are lacking, help....
I'm happy to email it to you as a traditional attachment. Send me an email at dherholz at gmail dot com
Any trick to activating the sunrise / sunset column? I saw the NOAA tab but am not getting the tabulation. Thanks you made a great resource
Sorry, I didn't see your comment until just now. Yeah, it's a little hacky, but yes, there is the hidden tab that I think I got from NOAA that calculates sunrise sunset for a given lat/long. That's the yellow highlighted cells on the NOAA tab. If you put in the lat/long for the city you want (I used Jefferson City MO about in the middle of the trail), it uses some crazy formulas to calculate the sunrise and sunset times for that lat long (columns Y and Z respectively) and then the formulas in the non-hidden tabs just do a vlookup to that table. As I remember the year was needed to match the NOAA table...but I didn't want to try to pass the year over to the table, so there is just an assumption that it's 2020 since I don't think it matters much what year a given date is, the sunrise/sunset times should be basically the same, with maybe the exception of leap years? I'm not sure, but I figured it was close enough. Does that help at all? Sorry, it's hard to explain and I don't know if I totally remember how I did it!
@@dherholz Do you know of a loop that would be St Charles / Wood River / Old Chain of Rocks Bridge / back to St Louis? I am coming from Anchorage, don't know the area and had heard there is some Lewis and Clark history there I should see.
I would be happy to help you figure up a route. One of my favorite routes in St. Louis is a century ride I do every year that goes through several of your targets. 100 miles may be more than you're looking for, especially if you're going to stop to take in history...but if you're truly wanting to loop from St. Charles and hit St. Louis it's going to be close to that distance. But maybe use this route as a starter and let me know if you have any questions. www.strava.com/activities/6285277278
Great spreadsheet... Thanks for sharing. Any chance you may have one for the GAP trail from Pittsburgh to DC?
I don't. But you're welcome to download the spreadsheet and try to adapt it, if you're Excel savvy. The main thing is to change the mile posts and the names of the trailheads (of course), and it should work for that. It just calculates the time based on your speed and the miles from the last trailhead, and works down the rows.
Awesome spreadsheet - thanks!!!!
Glad it was helpful!
Great Resource....I am looking to input REST days, How is the best way to add the time for rest days as I am 72 and need a bit more time to recover
Hi CARDS. So, each date/time cell refers to the cell above it. So what I'd suggest is decide where you want to do your overnights and type "overnight" in the break type column (G). Then, on the row below your overnight stay, type in the date/time you want to start that day in the ETA column (F). Then the rest of the spreadsheet should behave the way you want it to. You just won't be able to make changes to any of the "Overnight" cells after that since you would have hard coded a date/time in ETA. Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you have questions.
I love this. Thanks for sharing. One question. On the overnight function, is the function for the arrival time in the next town incorrect? It seems it defaults to the leave time at the top of the spreadsheet but doesn't factor in the time it would take to leave the overnight town and pedal to the next town. Or am I overthinking this?? No matter what, great tool!
You're right! I never noticed that before somehow. The ETD should reflect the time you leave the next morning (defaulting to the time specified at the top) and then the next town's ETA of course should be based on that overnight town's ETD. How silly of me. Thanks for pointing that out!
It has been fixed, with some better conditional formatting to highlight and bold start, lunch, and overnight rows. Thanks again for pointing that out.
@@dherholz Awesome! I'm going to use this next week for an out and back ride of the full trail. Thanks!
How did it go?
Thank you so much!! I am just starting the planning process for the first time on the this trail, and this will be so helpful. Quick question....I am not very adept at Excel, how do I go about adjusting individual daily start times? Any help would be appreciated!
Hello from the Katy trail! I'm using WiFi at a cafe in Rocheport, half way through a 4 day trip end to end. Anyway, if you want to change a start time you can simply overwrite that cell with your date/time. So like "7/1/22 7:15 am". All cells below it will look to the cell above to get its start time. It will then reset on the next day when you type "overnight" to the default start time at the top.
@@dherholz Thanks for the prompt reply, you rock! Enjoy your trip!!!
Hello! thank you so much for this! It looks like the link is broken. Any chance I could get that spreadsheet?
Hmm, it appears to work for me but I'd be happy to send you a copy. Please email me at the gmail address for user dherholz.
Thank you so much for creating and sharing this- it was incredibly helpful for planning our first full Katy Trail ride! I’m now attempting to adapt it for the Erie Canalway trail…
Awesome. Feel free to reach out if I can help.
Is electricity available at most trailheads?
No, not at most, only a couple that I found. Most have no electricity/lighting at all and a few don't even have plumbing (compost toilets). Bike charging can be a bit difficult on the Katy in my experience. I did a video on an ebike trip on the Katy and showed a few options I had found.
Does April sound like a mistake for this trip? My hunch is that time is a rain season. Thanks. Really like the spread sheet.
I think April is a great time to go. I don't have a lot of data handy on rainfall but I don't consider April to be particularly wet. The temps are pretty ideal though!
This is awesome! Thanks!
Thank you for this!
Have you done this for other trails?
No. It could be done pretty easily, one would just need to replace the mile posts and trailhead names. Is there a particular trail you'd like to have?
@ I have now ridden the Erie, OTET (both someone else planned) and I did the GAP/C&O with a different friend (I did the planning). We do a long route about once a year. I like your planner, one as cyclist the other as an analyst that loves a good Excel spreadsheet. I did send your video to our group planner. Thanks
This is great, thank you
You're very welcome!
Brilliant.
Thanks!
Looks good....But for me its over kill..I know where I am going...I do a daily map for my self..laminate it...
The purpose of this isn't where you're going, but rather when you will get there. And when you know arrival times, that can help you plan where you're going to have lunch and camp for the night.
👍
I like the road instead of lime stone
For sure. I hate rolling friction! But, I'm sure the cost of making a 237 mile paved trail would not be feasible. So, I'd rather have crushed limestone than nothing.