18h25m03s - is now the official GWR

[Going Underground]

Anyway, it's nice to know that i'm so "famous" that inspired so many people. I still just got lucky with the timing of 'The Tube' programme 'n' all. Two years earlier, and they'd of been filming Jack Welsby. Although I guess whoreing oneself by generating a website about it all does help.

I'm very confused about the CiN challenges. Are there TWO lots taking place? One that is going for the record, and one that is doing it over two days?

Well Mr Inspiration let me explain the CiN.....
The organiser taylorit had set the date for Thursday 16th Nov which unfortunately hardly anyone else could make. I suggested that if possible could this be shifted to the actual CiN day Friday 17th Nov which means people only having to book one day off work etc...

Most people could do the Friday but not everyone so it was decided that teams would go out on Thursday OR Friday (or both if anyone is that mad!)

Our team of starkey , soup dragon, Dr Who and I are also trying for a GWR at the same time, this being made on the Friday

Hope all clear as mud now.......

[Garion]

You've certainly inspired me!

[hwolge]

The Guinness certificates have arrived in the mail today!

[Going Underground]

The Guinness certificates have arrived in the mail today! Picture evidence will be posted here shortly...

Wow they certainly have excelled themselves this time......you must feel very pleased and proud.........

[CrunchySaviour]

Congratulation stations!

A Guinness world record is what I need......

[tubeguru]

Where have you been, you masked ne'er-do-well?

[Soup Dragon]

Welcome back Mr Masker!

[Going Underground]

You been gone too long Anthony........

[43019]

As have I come to think about it...

That certificate looks fecking amazing, I WANT ONE!

Many congratulations to the both of you on your record, I know for fact I will be unable to beat that any time soon, considering my best in Z1 is a measley 3h29m34s!

I'm already working on my route for the All Stations Challenge. What I will need is a partner on this run, something I'm finding difficult to find at the moment. The main thing I WILL be doing between now and March is cracking on with my fitness levels. Christmas and winter in general have combined to make me larger than I believe I was in September 2006...

Look out, I'm giving that record a run for its money!

[TheFatBuoy]

First off, a big heart congrats to Hakan + co on their record. Spendiferous stuff, I tells ye.

Now, onto important matters, I'm starting to get all cynical about this tube challenging kerfuffle.

I think that any form of event/activity that's done against the clock (with an attempt to beat an existing record time) has got to have a physical limit.

Take running 100 metres for example. Without looking it up I don't know exactly what the world record is, or who holds it, but it's around the 10 second mark. Possibly a shade under. It'll be a bloody hard task for a trained athlete to beat it, let alone by any significant margin - I mean, it's virtually impossible for any mechanically unassisted human being to come along and run it in 1 or 2 seconds - it's just not going to happen [1].

It might happen hundreds of thousands (or probably millions) of years from now, when the human race has evolved into some sort of super-being, but I reckon that the sun'll engulf the earth in a massive takeover bid before any human form can run 100 metres in a couple of seconds. In other words, it probably won't happen in any of our lifetimes.

My point is, that it took Sam + Steve quite a long time planning/practising, plus getting luck on their side, to beat the record by 10 seconds, and Hakan + co then went and smashed that record by about 10 minutes. I'm not saying it's impossible, but we've more or less reached some sort of plateau that is going to be bloody hard to beat.

So whilst I'd love to break the record, I'm just going to aim to get around the lot without breaking much of a sweat.

[1] I'll happily take bets though, if anyone fancies taking the chance - 1,000,000-1 that a mechanically unassisted human being does a sub-2 seconds 100m sprint in the next 50 years.

[hwolge]

My point is, that it took Sam + Steve quite a long time planning/practising, plus getting luck on their side, to beat the record by 10 seconds, and Hakan + co then went and smashed that record by about 10 minutes. I'm not saying it's impossible, but we've more or less reached some sort of plateau that is going to be bloody hard to beat.

As much as I agree with what you say, I must make a few remarks.
1) Tube Challenging has a large element of luck. If I were to make 10 repetitive attempts with the same route as we used for the record, my guess is that my best time would be around 18h flat and I'd fail to get around in 3-4 attempts (due to the relative early closing of T4).
2) I'm not very fit. Adding proper running would probably help some 10-15 minutes on the average. An elite medium distance runner would probably gain another 5 minutes.
3) The route is everything. I believe our route was a good 15 minutes quicker than any other route attempted before us. I think slightly better routes could be found.
4) Lastly, the challenge changes over time. Recently the MHE shuttle was added. The Hainault open times have been changed. Soon the entire ELL will be gone for good. Then we might get an extension to Watford Junction. And so on...

All in all, I believe there will never be an indefinite plateau as in the 100m dash...

[Soup Dragon]

My point is, that it took Sam + Steve quite a long time planning/practising, plus getting luck on their side, to beat the record by 10 seconds, and Hakan + co then went and smashed that record by about 10 minutes. I'm not saying it's impossible, but we've more or less reached some sort of plateau that is going to be bloody hard to beat.

We recently missed the record by just under 19 minutes. Without giving away any of our route I can tell you we lost 10 minutes at one point for vomit to be cleaned off a train, and then we lost another 35 minutes due to a signal failure (at 1900). Before the signal failure took place we were still 30 minutes ahead of Hakan's time, so I would say in theory a time of around 17 hr 45 mins is possible.

[Starkey7]

I'd agree with that. If a route can be found that has a planned time of X minutes, then this would suggest that (X+30) minutes is quite possible.

Due to this, I believe that 17 hours 50 minutes looks possible.

[hwolge]

Starkey7 - I agree. The exact definition of "theoretical time" seems a bit unclear, but I'd say the "theoretical time" of our record route was 17h10m (as far as I can recall).

This includes doing *most* of our walks/runs according to TFL "fast walking" times along with their bus times.

It certainly seems your route is quite close to ours in theoretical performance! Is this your route or a combined Brown-Starkey route?

BTW I've seen practically no accounts of the Brown (+Starkey7?) 18h43m56s run. Is there a writeup somewhere?

[Going Underground]

Starkey7 - I agree. The exact definition of "theoretical time" seems a bit unclear, but I'd say the "theoretical time" of our record route was 17h10m (as far as I can recall).

This includes doing *most* of our walks/runs according to TFL "fast walking" times along with their bus times.

It certainly seems your route is quite close to ours in theoretical performance! Is this your route or a combined Brown-Starkey route?

BTW I've seen practically no accounts of the Brown (+Starkey7?) 18h43m56s run. Is there a writeup somewhere?

It is indeed the Brown-Starkey route

You are correct there were no accounts and this was attempted towards the end of 2006...
We wanted to keep it fairly low key, although a couple of other people on the forum were aware including our "watch stopper" who wasn't needed in the end....
The route is now wrapped in cotton wool and will be attempted again on 1 or 2 possible dates in April....depending how the first one goes