Simply My Best: More numbers

SIMPLY MY BEST

UPDATE: This was the website where we figured out what SMB would be. Then we created a new site for SMB 2014. Then, in March, 2014, we launched a REAL website for the event and our nonprofit called Pilot Butte Summit Seekers. Check it out...

WWW.PILOTBUTTESUMMITSEEKERS.ORG

Kind of cool to watch it change from something we literally made up as we went along to something that was built on the efforts of so many and actually planned to some degree. It will be fun to watch the new website take shape over the coming months.

Btw, if you haven't heard, SMB 2014 is May 10th!

Note: Many functions on this old site have been removed or disabled, but the blog remains as a record of the SMB journey.

Monday, May 13, 2013

More numbers

Sorry about having to ask you about your age, but we needed to get a handle on how broad the age range was for people participating in SMB. Turns out the range was pretty broad:

AGE PERCENT
========= =======
1 to 10 9
11 to 20 9
21 to 30 9
31 to 40 10
41 to 50 17
51 to 60 23
61 to 70 16
71 to 80 4
81 to 85 2
Over 85 2

Knowing this will help us with fundraising next year.

SMB is all about people trying for a personal best. For those of you who hike the Butte regularly, you might be surprised by how many people accomplished a personal best going to the top one time. This is what we really wanted to see happen in SMB--people making it to the top for the first time or people doing less than that and turning in a personal best. There was one person who did a personal best going around the track twice. Later, I'll summarize some of the explanations that people gave for why what they did was a personal best. To me, this is the most interesting part of the whole event. For now, I have numbers on how many laps people did on the summit and base trails:

LAPS PEOPLE
==== ======
1 163
2 65
3 30
4 15
5 10
6 4
7 5
9 1
10 3
11 1
12 1
15 2

There was rumor of a woman doing 18 laps, but I didn't get an event form with that number of laps recorded. The rumor was pretty strong and so I think it is possible that it happened.

THE INSIDE SCOOP

This is not your typical event. It is informal and casual by nature. We hope to never be out there aggressively spreading the word because we think the event will always have a certain magic if we let it grow at a natural pace. Plus, as we have already found, Pilot Butte itself is the perfect place to spread the word. Not only are there a lot of hikers who already know each other, we have really been surprised by how many regular hikers there are that we don't know. It is no accident that the parking area gets over 15,000 cars per month. People love Pilot Butte.

If you haven't yet noticed, this event is really set up to take what you already do and then make that an outstanding experience one day out of the year. It is almost more a celebration than anything else. So you just show up and hike, something you'd probably do anyway. There is no entry fee, no official start time, or anything like that. There have to be a few formalities, but we are doing our best to make them as painless and fun as possible. We are also focusing a lot on the social aspect of the event. We want the normal encouragement that people always experience on the Butte to become infectious and reach new heights. In other words, while this is a day in which it could be easier than most to hike a personal best on the Butte, the overall focus is still on having fun. Then, as a side benefit, we end up solving one of the problems that people are most concerned about on the Butte. So there is actually a kind of reward in place if you decide to go for a personal best that day. But you don't even need to do that. Hiking your normal distance, or even less, still helps us raise the funds we need. Your being there is what is most important.

As much as possible, SMB is what you need it to be. We purposely left the term "personal best" a little vague and we are glad we did. Some people have already indicated that they go by a different standard than what we had in mind. That's great and we are trying very hard to work them into the event.

In designing this event, we are kind of taking our lead from Pilot Butte's Century Club, now a 13 year old tradition on the Butte. It demonstrates the power that a simple idea can have. This event will be a big success if we can keep it simple for both the hikers and the organizers. So we invite you to come out and "hike your butt off on the Butte." You can RSVP by clicking here.