I am losing track of how well Steve is doing under Attempt 2 compared to Kurt due to the different start dates. The current pictures give a somewhat distorted picture, as my gut feel is that Steve is not actually doing that well compared to Kurt (or at least compared to what he will need to do given winter).
The difficulty is that there is no obvious way of making a complete comparison. The charts I have been mostly showing recently on this thread (including this morning), make that comparison by standardising against the number of days since the start of the official record for each. It has the advantage in that it helps to equalise what each has yet to do (e.g. both have 319 days of the challenge left in which differences in daily distances will play out, even if we happen to know how a significant chunk of Kurt's riding develops). It also has the advantage of allowing direct comparison between Steve's reboot with his original attempt for the same period of time.
The alternative of comparing by absolute date rather than number of days ridden can be seen by unticking 'Common start times' on the interactive version. For today, this gives the following:
This gives a better picture of the differences (and similarities) of the day-by-day distances of the riders, but tells us less about how well they are doing with respect to the record (e.g. while Kurt is further ahead of Tommy's WR pace, he also has far less time left in the challenge to make up any deficits or extend his lead). This day-by-day difference is what I have been trying to emphasise in the text accompanying these daily reports on this thread. To see how those differences are accumulating, we can zoom in a little, still showing absolute dates rather than days ridden:
In the last week or so, Steve has been gaining on Kurt, but by a relatively small amount, so it's barely detectable on the graph (vertical distance of separation between the red and blue lines). The longer term trends are keeping them pretty evenly matched. The differences tend to emerge with those more occasional bad days when we see one or other of them dropping downwards a considerable distance.
Is there an accumulated figure for Steve compared to Kurt on days when they were both riding and, for the purpose of "getting a feel for the state of play" when Steve was "healthy" (i.e. omitting the days from the moped collision and the start of Attempt 2). Might give an idea of what the winter miles could (if his attempt 1 were replicated) do to Steve's progress?
That figure depends when you start counting. But if we take distance since 8th August (Steve's reboot date), Steve has ridden about 9,290 miles and Kurt about 9,480 – a difference of about 190 miles in Kurt's favour. But in the scheme of things, this is nothing, and gives us little clue as to who is more likely to end up with the record. I don't think the differences are sufficient to say that either rider will be able to put the record out of reach for the other. Steve now has the advance of starting later in the year so has more scope to adapt to whatever Kurt does in the remaining 100 days or so. But of course that carries extra risk in that we know that unanticipated problems can radically change the state of play.
As I say, I'm struggling to get a sense for how Steve is doing against what he "needs" to do, rather than what he has done.
My charts are an attempt to put the "what he needs to do" at the front of the design. It's all about keeping above that thick black 0 line. You can pencil in another line about 1000 miles or so above Tommy's line in anticipation of Kurt accumulating 76k miles or so in his 365 days, but even at this stage in the year, it's pretty much guesswork. Most of us thought at the start of the year that what the riders 'needed' to do was to flow with the seasons, allowing a deficit to accumulate over winder to be paid off with a large accumulation of miles over summer. We now know that this wasn't really sustainable and that a slow, steady accumulation of >206 mpd rides is more achievable.
@MrDream All of the above is indeed based on the Strava submissions and I haven't corrected for any UMCA altered distances for the last three months or so. That would probably explain the small differences we are getting (e.g. I currently have Steve about 33 miles ahead of Kurt's like-for-like distance in their first 46 days), but I don't think it yet affects the overall picture. When I have some time, I will make those minor adjustments with UMCA's official distances.