An Ajax request is taking 6 seconds to complete, not sure why

Question

I am working on a user interface, "dashboard" of sorts which has some div boxes on it, which contain information relevant to the current logged in user. Their calendar, a todo list, and some statistics dynamically pulled from a google spreadsheet.

I found here: http://code.google.com/apis/spreadsheets/data/3.0/reference.html#CellFeed that specific cells can be requested from the sheet with a url like this:
spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/cells/0AnhvV5acDaAvdDRvVmk1bi02WmJBeUtBak5xMmFTNEE/1/public/basic/R3C2

I briefly looked into Zend GData, but it seemed way more complex that what I was trying to do.

So instead I wrote two php functions: (in hours.php)
1.) does a file_get_contents() of the generated url, based on the parameters row, column, and sheet
2.) uses the first in a loop to find which column number is associated with the given name.

So basically I do an ajax request using jQuery that looks like this:

// begin js function

function ajaxStats(fullname)
{
    $.ajax({
        url: "lib/dashboard.stats.php?name="+fullname,
        cache: false,
        success: function(html){
            document.getElementById("stats").innerHTML = html;
        }
    });
}

// end js function

// begin file hours.php

<?php 
function getCol($name)
{
    $r=1;
    $c=2;
    while(getCell($r,$c,1) != $name)
    {    $c++;    }
    return $c;
}

function getCell($r, $c, $sheet)
{
    $baseurl = "http://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/cells/";
    $spreadsheet = "0AnhvV5acDaAvdDRvVmk1bi02WmJBeUtBak5xMmFTNEE/";
    $sheetID = $sheet . "/";
    $vis = "public/";
    $proj = "basic/";
    $cell = "R".$r."C".$c;

    $url = $baseurl . $spreadsheet . $sheetID . $vis . $proj . $cell . "";
    $xml = file_get_contents($url);

    //Sometimes the data is not xml formatted,
    //so lets try to remove the url
    $urlLen = strlen($url);
    $xmlWOurl = substr($xml, $urlLen);

    //then find the Z (in the datestamp, assuming its always there)
    $posZ = strrpos($xmlWOurl, "Z");
    //then substr from z2end
    $data = substr($xmlWOurl, $posZ + 1);

    //if the result has more than ten characters then something went wrong
    //And most likely it is xml formatted
    if(strlen($data) > 10) 
    {
        //Asuming we have xml 
        $datapos = strrpos($xml,"<content type='text'>");
        $datapos += 21;
        $datawj = substr($xml, $datapos);
        $endcont = strpos($datawj,"</content>");
        return substr($datawj, 0,$endcont);
    }
    else
        return $data;
} 
?>

//End hours.php

//Begin dashboard.stats.php

<?php
session_start();
// This file is requested using ajax from the main dashboard because it takes so long to load,
// as to not slow down the usage of the rest of the page.

if (!empty($_GET['name']))
{
    include "hours.php";
    // GetCollumn of which C#R1 = users name
    $col = getCol($_GET['name']);
    // then get cell from each of the sheets for that user,
    // assuming they are in the same column of each sheet
    $s1 = getcell(3, $col, 1);
    $s2 = getcell(3, $col, 2);
    $s3 = getcell(3, $col, 3);
    $s4 = getcell(3, $col, 4);
    // Store my loot in the session varibles,
    // so next time I want this, I don't need to fetch it
    $_SESSION['fhrs'] = $s1;
    $_SESSION['fdol'] = $s2;
    $_SESSION['chrs'] = $s3;
    $_SESSION['bhrs'] = $s4;
}
//print_r($_SESSION);
?>
<!-- and finally output the information formated for the widget-->
<strong>You have:</strong><br/>
<ul style="padding-left: 10px;">
    <li>        <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['fhrs']; ?></strong> fundraising hours<br/></li>
    <li>earned $<strong><?php echo $_SESSION['fdol']; ?></strong> fundraising<br/></li>
    <li>        <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['chrs']; ?></strong> community service hours<br/></li>
    <li>        <strong><?php echo $_SESSION['bhrs']; ?></strong> build hours <br/></li>
</ul>

//end dashboard.stats.php

I think that where I am loosing my 4 secs is the while loop in getCol() [hours.php]
How can I improve this, and reduce my loading time?

Should I just scrap this, and go to Zend GData?
If it is that while loop, should i try to store each users column number from the spreadsheet in the user database that also authenticates login?