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Zone 1 Challenge 2005This time it was for real! When we first tried the Zone 1 Challenge, ie to visit all 64 stations within Zone 1 of the London Underground in shortest possible time, we did it without any expectations except of doing something crazy for one day. However, since it turned out to be a success (read all about it...) we consequently decided to have a go on Zone 1 Challenge 2005 – to be held on May 20th. So I and Patrick decided to bring our girlfriends Lena & Maria for a May weekend in London – barely mentioning the fact that the Challenge was the real purpose. Since I'm not in the best physical shape (and as it turned out, further incapacitated by a bad cold and a bad heel) we planned for walking and not running. We had several good laughs about someone complaining about the strong headwind in Hyde Park during a Zone 1 attempt... So we set the parameter of walking speed to around 7 km/h (which certainly is slightly more than ordinary walking) to my computer based optimizing program. And behold, we produced 34 possible routes – each one looking very promising. Now all we had to do was to wait for the 20th of May. However, suddenly the news about the Queensway closure broke. Pandemonium followed on the forum (which is here...) How would their plans hold up (most including a sprint between Bayswater and Queensway)? Some, including me, worried about the rules. I felt it was necessary to quickly get a decision on how to treat the matter in order to adapt my computer program. The ruling came, stating that Queensway must be passed through and that it could neither be start nor finish station – excellent! I produced 33(!) new routes for the upcoming event... 19th of May – day before the battle I had arrived late on Wednesday night and I had some hours to do recceing of certain sections and aspects of Zone 1 with which I was not too familiar. Most notably I wanted to check out the few possible walks between stations where I hadn't been before. These were: Euston – Euston Square, Warren Street – Great Portland Street, Great Portland Street – Regent's Park and between the Edgware Rds. I also wanted to find out the best place to change between Northern and Bakerloo coming south through Leicester Square on the way to Elephant & Castle (and reverse). The latter eventually proved pointless since our route never took us that way. However, two of the walks were executed flawlessly thanks to this effort. We had covered the Aldgates back in February and I felt reasonably confident about those. I also spent some time checking out High Street Kensington – Earl's Court – Gloucester Road – South Kensington. I only had a few hours, because this was my birthday so Lena understandably wanted to spend time with me as well. Furthermore – we had tickets for the Star Wars opening night that evening! 20th of May – Challenge Day I and Lena arrived at Oxford Circus at 11.45, just when the crowd was gathering. Patrick and Maria turned up a few minutes later. It was good to see all these people whom I only knew electronically. Everybody seemed anxious to have a look at the crazy Swedes – the rumour of our attendance had clearly preceded us. Most participants seemed focused and well prepared. We were slightly intimidated by the fact they were dressed for a marathon rather than a leisurely train ride. We barely recognized Anthony Smith without his infamous mask, but when we eventually did, we took the chance to acquire our own copies of his new hit single “Please stand to the right – District Line dub”. Drawing from the hat – the defining moment
It was a tense moment when former Guinness Record holder Jack Welsby was performing the much advertised hat drawing. Especially when Geoff announced that Jack was going to pull one out the 34(!) possible starting stations. A chill went down my spine – we only had 33 routes prepared. After a momentary confusion Jack confirmed that 33 was the number. We were hoping for a “hard” start station – even though we didn't quite know which these were... St. James's Park was drawn. We quickly brought out our plan for that specific route – and it looked very good – an estimated time of 2h59m17s. Last minute battle orders All participants (almost all, we found out later) made their way to St. James's Park. Arriving there it was 30 minutes to wait. We had our plan ready - going East to Aldgate East. We took a quick double check to see if anything could be gained by taking a Circle to Aldgate and thus reversing the walk. However, even with every train on time this would be a bad idea. Other teams huddled over their maps, some cramming themselves into odd spaces of dubious functions:
The game is afoot – or on track... Suddenly all nervousness was gone – the adrenalin pumped – we were on our way. The first leg was a District Train for Aldgate East. Surprisingly, only we and Stephen Knight seemed to be on that train. After initial politeness we agreed to stick to our plans and have a look at each others. Interesting how different plans can emerge from the same set of constraints... However we felt we had the better route. Our route execution – stop by stop (the route and schedule here...) Arriving at Aldgate East, we immediately saw Stephen setting off. We managed to keep up for at least a hundred feet or so. Enough for us to use the left exit (instead of the right, we had used back in February) – bad choice. Anyway, arriving at the platform at Aldgate we saw Stephen still there – not having gained anything by his sprinting! The train departed 9 seconds ahead of our schedule – nice start, we decided! Arriving in Great Portland Street, I had almost recuperated from the Aldgate walk. Patrick looked in great shape though. We had a good change here walking to Regent's Park. Green lights crossing the streets, an elevator descending shortly after we went in, just a short wait for the Bakerloo train for Edgware road. Almost 2 minutes ahead of schedule already. Arriving at Edgware Road – we knew it was at a crucial stage. We were going to catch an H&C train for Paddington at the other Edgware Road – and those run only every 8 minutes or so. Having been here the day before I took charge under the Marylebone fly-over and directed us down to the proper platform without hesitation. We were lucky, it only took a couple of minutes before we departed four and a half minute ahead of our schedule. Now we were growing very confident. Having overestimated the walking distances inside Paddington, we departed south towards High Street Kensington six and a half minutes ahead of schedule. The double back at HSK went well. Next up was Notting Hill Gate, the change where we had lost Johan (or he lost us, rather) three months earlier due to crowds. This time I and Patrick relied heavily on the Way Out guide – to get first into any corridors – which worked fine. Catching a Central Eastbound we noticed we were 7m16s ahead of schedule, which was the maximum noted for the day. By now my cold was really taking its toll, I felt terrible. I was sitting there absolutely soaked in sweat (from trying and failing to run) and coughing... I dreaded the upcoming change at Tottenham Court Road. In my shape the Northern Northbound platform seemed very, very far away. Eventually we got on a train having lost more than a minute to our schedule. Next up were the Euston Northern-Northern change. Arriving at the Southbound City Branch platform we met Peter Miller. We only had a quick chat. Down to Bank, another so-so change (a long walk it seemed) we departed on a Westbound Central for Holborn. At Holborn we changed to Northbound Piccadilly for a quick double back at Russell Square, where we arrived at the Southbound platform just as the train pulled out. Piccadilly did not let us down – another train soon materialized and we were off towards Piccadilly Circus 4m24s ahead of schedule. At Piccadilly Circus we had a good change and departed towards Elephant & Castle with six minutes to spare. Elephant & Castle was good too. Northern did run well this day so we departed almost six and a half minutes ahead of schedule. At London Bridge we had to wait for a while for a Jubilee train. We had plenty of time to make sure we embarked on carriage 1 since this was indicated in the Way Out guide as the proper one for a change to Piccadilly at Green Park. We left London Bridge five minutes ahead of schedule. At Green Park everything went wrong. We were in the wrong end of the train. The Way Out guide was Way Off! I was completely exhausted from the cold so we had to walk all of it. The change is bad as it is. Arriving at an empty Piccadilly platform (always a bad sign) we had to wait another five(!) minutes for the next train. Now we were only one minute ahead of schedule – just as we had started to think that we had all but won! Doubling back at Earl's Court is always interesting. Our decision was to stick with the Piccadilly if the next train was due in less than two minutes; if more than two minutes we would take our chances with District Line. Had it been two minutes we would have made up our mind then... It was one minute. From the recceing the previous day I knew that South Kensington is much nicer than Gloucester Road when changing to District/Circle. When getting off the train at South Kensington, my left heel turned on me. It had been inflamed for several months, but I thought it would stick by me. A violent pain suddenly pierced my leg. I could tell that no tendon had snapped or so, but rather a very irritated inflammation returning... Anyway now I was limping badly. Fortunately we got a good connection at South Kensington. Before arriving in Victoria I told Patrick to run his best to catch the first Victoria train for our home stretch to Vauxhall. I'd limp along best I could. If he made a better train than I, the plan was to go back to the pub with differing results – risking disqualification. Luckily, as it turned out we both made the same train. Still a minute up on our plan! At our previous attempt we experienced that the estimated time between Victoria and Vauxhall was exaggerated - and so it was this time - we arrived after 2h56m51s in Pimlico, 2m26s better than planned! The result Having limped back and taken a bus part of the distance between Oxford Circus and the pub – we arrived as team number three – Peter & Erin and Geoff & Neill had already arrived. Knowing we had taken quite a while to get to the pub we felt we were in a good position. Without giving too much away we soon realized that we were the only three teams with sub-three hour times. Excited we guessed that we held at least a podium place... Lo and behold - in fact we were the winners! For all the results please check out Geoff's site or Tubeguru's site. The celebrations A good time was had by all in the pub afterwards. We were very proud receiving the trophy – almost a bit ashamed of being foreigners beating all the locals – sorry about that! The aftermath – was it all beginners luck? Upon returning home I started to analyze all the competitors routes to see if they were just unlucky or actually didn't have as good routes. My analysis showed that we did in fact have the best route of all – the second and third place teams had good routes too, and their ability to run a bit more than us and more local knowledge turned this into an amazingly close contest. However one other route stands out to me. It was Andrew Steer's one: St James' Park - Earl's Court - Kings' Cross - Moorgate - Farringdon - Chancery Lane - Liverpool Street - Aldgate - Aldgate East - Westminster - London Bridge - Elephant & Castle - Embankment - Euston - Euston Square - Gt Portland Street - Regents Park - Edgware Road (B) - Edgware Road (H&C) - Paddington (H&C) - Paddington (C&D) - High Street Kensington - Notting Hill Gate - Oxford Circus – Vauxhall In my world this route contains the following very positive details: 1) Avoid the Cromwell curve if possible, ie don't go between HSK and Earl's Court or Gloucester Road – always a bad idea (as several teams experienced this very day!) 2) Only use H&C once to or from Paddington (H&C) since it is a high latency affair... 3) Use the Farringdon – Chancery Lane run, if you are even a half-decent runner. (I hadn't realised that one before) Had
Andrew had just a little bit of luck and maybe done some more
running (I have no idea what expired though) he would have been
right up there. One big improvement to his route would have been
between King's Cross and Aldgate. Just change it around to We had a great day and hope to be back for Zone 1 Challenge 2006! Proud member of the 2005 winning “66 Feet Under” tube racing team. |
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