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The Zone1 challenge started when I wrote up about the possibility of doing it on my alternative challenges pages. I then had a chap called Peter Smyth eMail me and tell me that he'd had a go at this, and had done it in 3 hours, 16 minutes and 59 seconds. He started at Vauxhall and Ended at Euston. It should be noted that this is not an officially recognised world record attempt - it's just a bit of fun which people have decided to do. Ewan In June 2004, 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. It then escalated into a 'proper' event with various teams participating. So on Friday 30th July 2004, we all met just after midday at Vauxhall, and this is what happened ... We're in the Zone First up, we think we've managed to get ourselves on the telly again when a nice TV reporter - Mike - turned up from BBC London. He seemed almost as enthusiastic about the whole thing as us, and suggested that we perhaps turned this into an annual event. The second scary thing was that Ewan was wearing his kilt for the day! I kid you not - he ran around with his team in traditional scotswear - top man!
So after a few fake setup shots of us 'starting' for the cameras, and the obligatory group photo (above), we all bundled down to the platform level and started on the same train. "What happens now then?", asked the BBC man "Well", said Ewan "It's quite likely that most people are going to change at Victoria, and some of us will go west and some of us will go east". And that's exactly what happened! We all bundled up the stairs/escalators at the same time (Adham taking the lead), and it was only later that we realised that one of the teams had stayed on past Victoria. My team was myself and Neil, and we went and did our own thing from pretty much early on. Amusingly 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, and found out who'd done what route in what times, and here are the results in ascending order ...
John "Statto" Sanders - 3 hours, 31 minutes, 21 seconds Rather amusingly, we hadn't seen John at the beginning at Vauxhall - he'd started elsewhere instead! But he was by himself (he was hoping to be with some friends who'd bailed), and he had a lot of problems, and he admitted as much himself that he "wasn't trying that hard", to do it all - but decided at the last minute to have a crack at it anyway. John and his mates have made a few attempts to do the whole things in recent weeks, and John (aka 'Statto') is also the man who runs the Tube in a Day website, as well as his own at Statto.com
Joe Boyle & Samuel Robinson - 3 hours, 11 minutes, 53 seconds I hope I've remembered everyone's names properly, and that I've put the right photograph next to the right names - or it'll be really embarrassing otherwise! Let me know if I've cocked up. I say that because I think that this is the right picture of Samuel & Joe, and if it's not, well then I'm very confused as to who it is! Suffice to say there was a two man team with Sam and Joe in it, and I think that they were the only ones (like myself and Neil) to do the 'Knightsbridge to Sloane Square' manouevre, whilst everyone else just double backed at Sloane Square.
Jodie
Armstrong & Mark Hurn - 3 hours, 10 minutes, 57 seconds These men were dedicated - they must have been, as they had T-Shirts made up with the logo 'Tube Runner' on them, made up especially for the day. They're actually mates of Ewan and could have gone with him , but decided to be a breakaway group and have a go at it without the mad-kilted ones help
Geoff
& Neil -
3 hours, 4 minutes, 3 seconds Yes, i know! You're saying "Blimey, you didn't win then?". No! We didn't. Mainly due to the f*&ing Northern Line at Waterloo when we had a change - just missed a train by a few seconds, and the next one took 13 - thirteen! - minutes to turn up. If this had been a much more reasonable 3 to 4 minutes, then we'd of got a sub-three hour time. But as it was, we didn't. No matter, there's always next time... Anyway, you don't need a picture of me, but enjoy one of the back of Neil's head at Embankment, where - oh look, he's wearing the same t-shirt as me, with our - admittedly as yet unconfirmed world-breaking time - for doing the whole thing! Peter
Smythe - 3 hours, 2 minutes, 49 seconds This is man that first did it then in 3 hours 16 minutes! This time he beat his own time easily, and only just missed out on getting under that 'magic' three hour point. The most amusing this was though, is that his route was exactly the same (and therefore time) as ...
David Scard & David Perrin - 3 hours, 2 minutes, 49 seconds When Neil and I were running between Aldgate East and Aldgate, we passed all three of them running in the opposite direction and I thought that they were running as one team - only later did I realise they they just happened to have exactly the same route for the whole thing! They therefore also had exactly the same times.
Adham Fischer - 2 hours, 59 minutes, 19 seconds Possibly the highpoint of Adham's day was when he realised in the pub afterwards that he hadn't won, but he has beaten me! "Yes!!" he said, clenching his fist in triumph ... it cheered him up. Something had to after a nasty collision accident where he knocked some poor women over, and like the good man he is, instead of just running of he stuck around to help her and apologise, and delayed himself by a few minutes. He could have had a faster time therefore..!? Anyway, I think it would be fair to say that everyone found Adham, umm... quite energetically enthusiastic! We also found out that he'd come down from Leicester on Wednesday and had practicedhis route couple of times before doing it for real on the Friday.
Ewan Spence & Tom Reynolds - 2 hours, 56 minutes, 39 seconds Here he is! The man himself, and look (below) at how close he was to winning - just a few agonizing seconds in it, but still a great great time. Later in the evening after a pint or two, he leaned over in direction and mentioned that "He was thinking about doing the whole thing", but I don't think he should tell his wife that - let's hope she doesn't read this webpage. Anyway Ewan, thank you for organising it all - you're a top man, and I hope that we can entice you back down next year for the 2005 effort.Annual event, right? :-)
And so the winner is ... Steve
Paull - 2 hours, 55 minutes, 50 seconds I first met Steve in the latter half of last year when we bumped into each other up at Uxbridge very early one morning - when we were both separately attempting to do the whole challenge. Steve is a lovely bloke, and hasn't had much luck when doing the whole thing, so I think he was most pleased to have been the fastest for Zone 1.He did reveal his route to us (but I didn't write it down), although I do remember that he did a run between Goodge Street and Russell Square, which intrigued us all ...
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The
'Zone1' only challenge 2004
