Zone1 2008
In 2008, I was living 4,000 miles away from the London Underground in the USA. But Neil & me came up with the crazy plan that I would fly over just to take part in this years challenge, on Friday May 30th. And I made this rather good video about it too ...
The winning team though was '66 Feet under' - our swedish friends Håkan Wolgé and Patrick Sillén & Lars Andersson who came in at 2 hours, 55 minutes and 32 seconds.
Zone 1 2004
After writing about it a possible alternative challenge to do here on my webpages, Ewan Spence got in touch to say that he was going to do it as a final fun thing to do in London before he moves away. We organised, got the media involved and it took place on Friday 30th July 2004, where we all met at midda at Vauxhall station.
Ewan - a scotsman - turned out and ran around with his team in traditional scotswear - a kilt, top man!
My team was myself and Neil, and we went and did our own thing from pretty much early on. We did run past some people going in the opposite direction to us as we were doing the Aldgate - Aldgate East run, and we saw Adham at Paddington H&C at well a couple of hours later.
Towards 4pm, when the three hours were up, we all congregated in the pub of popular choice - the Horse & Groom in Great Portland Street, to see who has the fastest time. The winner was Steve Paull who (with a solo effort) had come in with a great time of 2 hours, 55 minutes and 50 seconds. He revealed that on part of his route he'd run betwen Goodge Street and Russell Square.
The TV report was then on the news later that night ...
'Zone 1 Only' Alternative Challenge
The Zone 1 challenge first started in 2004 when Scotsman Ewan Spence wanted 'one last crazy thing to do' before he left London to return home.
He got in touch with Geoff & Neil to drum up some support - which we did, and we had about 15 people taking part on the day.
We all started at the same place - Vauxhall - with a finishing point being anywhere you liked. BBC London got wind of this and sent down a cameraman for a piece here that was on the local news that night.
It got bigger and had more people in subse quent years, but the two that I liked were 2004 with the TV video report, and 2008 when I made my own video about the event.