tubechallenge.com

OK, there are 3 options:

1. Finishing station drawn out of hat. Competitors allowed to start at any station. Synchronise watches. Competitors leave for their starting station, clocks start at 1pm exactly. Winner is first to arrive at finishing station having visited all other Z1 stations.

Pros:
Immediately obvious who has won
Wide scope for different routes to be created
Cons:
Dishonest tubers may cheat by leaving before 1pm
Could be a gap of 1 hour between slowest and fastest times, so we could be standing in the station for a long time waiting for Presswell and company
Everyone will start at Vauxhall anyway

2. Same rules as last year. Starting station drawn from hat. Competitors and umpire go to starting station, make their routes, and are allowed to take the first train in each direction (also, if District and Circle, etc., such as last year, competitors allowed to take the first District or the first Circle train). Competitors stop clocks individually once they finish, and make their way to the pub.

Pros:
Competitive start.
No waiting around at finish station for an hour.
Nobody knows who's won (except umpire) until the results are announced: maximum suspense!
Cons:
Slightly more probable that competitors may use the same route, I suppose, but there wasn't much of this happening last time

3 and 4. Both start and finish stations drawn from hat. Clocks start either at exactly 1pm, meaning that the winner will be the first to arrive at the finish station, or on departure of the competitors' train, meaning the first back to the finishing station is likely to be the winner, but may lose to a team who started slightly later.

Pros:
Competitive start.
No chance of stopwatch-related cheating.
Cons:
Less suspense for the awards ceremony in the pub.
Much more likely that there will be identical routes chosen


They are the three most sensible suggestions. Please vote, and post comments or criticisms. Thanks.

CrunchySaviour wrote: Cons:
Could be a gap of 1 hour between slowest and fastest times, so we could be standing in the station for a long time waiting for Presswell and company

Hahaha.

We're only aiming for 45 minutes longer this time..

Gah! He spotted it!

Does that mean you're aiming to be 45 minutes SLOWER next time?

Surely that's not possible unless you get out of each train and wait for the one behind

OK, the suggestions.

The idea of number 1 has been growing on me since Anthony first suggested it last week but as he says, there is a high chance that cheating may occur if a train arrives at a team's starting station before 1pm and they get on it.

And as he has rightly pointed out, everyone will just decamp to Vauxhall so maybe if we DID choose number 1, we would have to ban starting there or at Pimlico.

And after all, we proved last time that fast times can be achieved without starting down there or even visiting it early on to get it out of the way.

I don't like 3 and 4 simply because of the "same route" problem. It's no fun when you all follow each other for the first two hours and then do the last bit slightly differently to each other.

Having thought about it, idea 1 has started to seem like more of a bad idea. It's the thought of having to wait around in a Tube station for the finishers... well, the competitiors won't have to, they can go on to the pub, but the umpire might want to.

Basically, I personally think the rules should stay as they were last year. It was good fun like that and I see no reason to change.

So essentially, having started all of this off by suggesting new rules, you are now saying that we keep them the same?

You plonker

Yep!

I really dislike idea no. 1.

It's less about how long it takes to do it, and you could be bollocksed if you can't get a train til 1:10.

Yeah, there are a couple of bad points with idea 1 which aren't going to go away any time soon.

For Plan 1 you wouldn't need to wait at the finish station, you could log your time with the umpire then head to the pub. So the waiting would be taken out of the equation, also if your going to bring cheating into this then you'd never be able to prevent that, for the plan this year people could of just finished 10 stations early, said they had better changes than they did and probably noone would be any the wiser, but the point in that would be almost none, the cheating factor will always be there for everyone but there is no point cheating for this its just for fun.

joy54 wrote:... you could log your time with the umpire then head to the pub....

but that doesn't guarantee that the landlord will serve you!

Love it ...

tubeguru wrote:Does that mean you're aiming to be 45 minutes SLOWER next time?

Actually, I've devised a route today that, without allowing times for changes, clocks in at just over 2 hours.

While that's by no means a record route once you've added the changes in, I still reckon it'll be sub 3 hours..

May have to try it out very soon..

Give me the day and I'll take you on. The Zone 1 Blaster will return.

Alright.

How does May sound?