tubechallenge.com

I hope you will forgive me for setting up my own topic thread for my attempt as part of the great Tube race.

Once again, it will a solo effort, with no support, apart from, hopefully, a visit from the family at my home station. However, a big difference compared with my previous six attempts is that now I am the proud owner of a smartphone. It will be interesting to see how much difference the easy access to real-time information may make. Also, there will be a new challenge of how to coax the battery to last all day if there is intensive use of it. As usual, I will try to send the occasional tweet during the day.

After trying out a few ideas that I wasn't totally happy with, I've now settled on a new strategy (of course, subject to events on the day). This should involve a couple of changes that I've not used before. I've decided to start fairly early, as on my route any poor connections in the morning should be more than compensated for by having a better service on some later stages in the early, rather than late, evening.

I'm not particularly confident this time. My fitness seems to have tailed off significantly since I did Zone 1 at the end of May, and I'm still not convinced that TfL can run an exhibition service after my experience of it last time. My original idea was that if it all went horribly wrong early enough, I might pack up and try again the next day; however, this is no longer an option, as there has now been fixed a meeting on Wednesday which I have to attend. Consequently, as long as is it is possible, I will carry on to try for a completion, which if I succeed will be my fifth.

I hope that I will see some of the other teams during the day. It's not the first time that I've done a full network when someone else has been trying:
- On Tube 1, I subsequently discovered that it was the same day as the Marc Gawley record, but he did not appear to be at Terminal 5 when I finished there, which might have been expected given his time if had he started on the most favourable train from Chesham on the then timetable.
- On Tube 4, I started with Al and our routes coincided for the first couple of hours before we went our separate ways. My attempt that day didn't last much longer, as a couple of hours later I got ensnared in major problems on the District Line.
- On Tube 5, when I got on a much delayed Exhibition service at Earls Court, I found Geoff and his team already on it having come from High Street Kensington. They abandoned soon after, whereas I struggled on to complete in a not particularly quick time.

Good Luck Nigel! I find if put you phone in safe/airplane mode while underground the battery usually lasts longer.

Or just turn off the wifi/mobile data when you're not using it.

(If it's an Android phone, the JuiceDefender app is useful - it'll turn data off when the screen's off, save for a brief check every hour)

Thanks for the phone tips - hopefully, it will last longer than I do tomorrow.

Echoing what has been said, by doing that is definitely a help

What phone do you have?

Having originally planned a 6:30 start from Chesham, I eventually decided that that there was too much of a risk of a non-completion if something went wrong. Instead I replanned my route based on a 5:15 start, which after trying out various options, came out with something which in theory was just as quick.

So that meant a 3:30 alarm clock. Normally, I try to be very quiet when I get up at that time so as not to wake the rest of the house. But on Tuesday I was instructed that if the sky was clear (which it was) to wake my wife and son so they could go into the back garden to lay on their backs watching the Perseid meteor shower which was peaking then. So while I drove Chesham, they had a successful meteor watch until dawn. Goodness know what the neighbours thought was going on.

My starting train left nearly two minutes late which is useful for reducing the final time, as the first connection was not in danger. All the first three hours went really smoothly with all connections made, including the tight ones. On my first run, the incoming train arrived fractionally early and I surprised myself my nearly getting a train ahead (which I had not planned) – had I realised this was possible, I may have pushed myself a bit harder. With slightly better fitness, this potentially opens up new possibilities.

I tried to do something new. There is a section of the route after about four hours where, because of timetable changes, there are some fairly slack connections. The net result is that you should come out about 10 minutes behind what was possible last year. So I had the idea of just picking up one extra station as an out and back earlier on which would use up the slack, and save you doing it later in the day. That is what I tried – except when I got to this extra station there was a seven minute wait shown to the next train (instead of the normal two to three minute rush hour frequency) and when it did arrive it was completely rammed full. Only some quick thinking and rejigging of the next few sections allowed me to redeem the situation.

I had problems with the District Line all day:
• Coming into Upminster three minutes late nearly cost me the return C2C. It was there that I encountered Tangy also racing across the bridge. But after travelling together on the C2C, we went our separate ways again.
• I got to Wimbledon 10 minutes later than hoped, but with a District line train set up to connect nicely with the scheduled time for the Olympia service from Earls Court. The District closed its doors and departed on time, only to slam on the brakes two seconds later. The driver announced that he had a green signal but it suddenly turned red and he didn’t know why, but would try to find out. Fifteen minutes later he tells us that there is a signal failure, but he was to proceed under caution going slowly through each signal: everybody should sit down or hold tight as the automatic brakes may be applied. We proceed in this fashion all the way to Putney Bridge, losing, in total, about half an hour, while all the time the standard announcements were saying that there was a good service on all lines.
• At Ealing Broadway, there was a green signal at the scheduled departure time. After two minutes, I looked out of the door to see why we weren’t moving only to see the driver sauntering very slowly from the rear of the platform. It took him another three minutes to get into his cab and depart five minutes late.
• Even when I had finally finished with the District line, it had one final sting in its tail to mess things up. At Acton Town with only the Piccadilly line down to Heathrow to do, I find both platforms blocked by non-moving trains – a District to Ealing Broadway and a Piccadilly to Uxbridge. After a while it is announced that due to a problem with the District line just outside Ealing Broadway, there is a District Line train sitting at Ealing Common, blocking the two now at Acton Town. It took about ten minutes to sort this out, all the while the pre-recorded announcements of there being a good service becoming increasingly annoying.
• Ironically, for me, the only District line to run to time was the Kensington (Olympia) service!

I managed to make the difficult three of the Hainault Loop, Mill Hill East and Olympia all with less than a minute to spare. For two of these three, I threw myself into the nearest carriage as the doors were closing. In one case, I was in such a state with panting breathing and sweat pouring off me that some of the carriage were concerned for my welfare, while others tried to distance themselves from the nutter who had just thrown himself through the doors. Clearly, had I not had the good fortune to make all these three my time would have been much worse.

My wife and son met me, as usual, at Woodford bearing gifts of fresh water and home-made flapjacks.

Yesterday was a day for trying new things – there were at least four connections that I’d never done on a full network before. Thanks for the advice on making a smartphone last the day – it did easily. Without it, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to try some new options to ameliorate some of the losses I was incurring. My final time of 17h 12m 12s was slower than hoped, but better than I feared it would be at certain times during the day. Yesterday seemed like hard work, every time I had a relatively gentle jog lined up, the incoming train would arrive late, making sure I had to run the connection as fast as I could. Also, because you’re having to work hard just to redeem a poor situation, psychologically it is not as motivating as when you need to run hard to set a new best time.

I wonder if this August race will become a permanent fixture in the Tube Challenge Calendar. Of course, that assumes there will continue to be an Exhibition service in the future, which I am beginning to doubt.

May I just congratulate you for being the first person ever to use the word "ameliorate" on this forum.

tubeguru wrote:May I just congratulate you for being the first person ever to use the word "ameliorate" on this forum.

Yes you may. The post was the first time on the forum the following words had also been used: "Perseid", "meteor", "sauntering", "psychologically" & "fractionally".

I'm interfrastically looking for words that not been used before now!

My search reveals more than one usage of each word