These are the daily distances as I have been retrieving them from Strava. There is the minor discrepancy of 6km of one car transfer recorded in one of the tracks, but otherwise, this looks internally consistent to me.
Date | Steve (miles) | Kurt (miles) |
1 Jan | 222.6 | |
...
4 Feb | 200.4 | 196.3 |
Total | 6501.0 | 5230.1 |
Average | 185.7 | 201.2 |
I notice Steve was 1655.3 miles ahead when Kurt started, and is now 1270.9 miles ahead, an average daily reduction of ~15mls (BMC) - and Steve is having to contend with the British winter. It'll be spring soon...
Go Steve!
So, if I project that rate of attrition, Steve will come a distant second
More seriously, it will be informative when Steve starts to narrow those daily losses, and then again when he starts to reverse the difference. Kurt will have the advantage again for the last two months of 2015, so it is by no means easy for Steve to claw back to parity and then put in a sufficient buffer that Kurt just can't recover it. In fact, it's going to be bloody difficult, because Kurt is always going to know how many more times round the block he needs to ride and so Steve is going to have to grind him down into submission.
Forget the chess match that WB mentioned, this is more like chess boxing and the pugilists are landing jabs at the moment testing out for weak spots before they come out swinging.