GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

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nozzacook
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by nozzacook »

I agree Moley just because they are not on here doesn't mean they are not just as expert. You can have the best route possible but you also need a big chunk of luck ask all the record holders they all had luck the day they broke the record. With the record so tight you need to take risks with the planning and most record routes have a near impossible connection somewhere.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by tubeguru »

MylesHSG wrote:So these two come out of nowhere and take a hard fought record just like that? :shock:
I'm sure that applied to two certain members of this forum in May 2004 (although back then it wasn't as "hard fought" over as it is now).
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by RJSRdg »

nozzacook wrote:I agree Moley just because they are not on here doesn't mean they are not just as expert.
Given that most (all?) people on here use aliases,how can you be sure they're not on here? (And no, it's not me!)
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by Going Underground »

tractakid wrote:
Going Underground wrote:Agreed it's a wind up and somehow they have blagged this into a GWR... As has been said many times before it's very easy to piece together enough evidence without visiting all the stations in a day :roll:
What actual evidence do you have to doubt the claim?
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by Iain »

Rumour is their route was put together by Phil A. O'Fish :lol:
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by geofftech »

MylesHSG wrote:Relying on an evening Olympia is a risky strategy, but it obviously paid off. I kind of agree with Kev on this one, to get the GWR it takes a certain dedication that in recent years Andi and Geoff have displayed. I still doubt Marc Gawleys attempt and I am sceptical on this one. I mean the amount of times for both Andi and Geoff I'm sure the tube has cocked up in a critical moment and all hope is lost. So these two come out of nowhere and take a hard fought record just like that? :shock:
Heh... thanks Myles! Indeed my thought is "Have they done this once and got lucky, or loads of times which we don't know about?". If it's the first, that's galling ... because so many of us (I'm thinking Al and a couple of others, not just me & Andy) know what it's like to have multiple attempts and for it all to go wrong - which is why I'd have to say to hope it's the latter.

I remember with myself & Neil in 2004, we got our luck making a train at West Ruislip off of Ickenham which I didn't expect us to make when a Met was cancelled at Uxbridge. If we hadn't of made that, Steven Karahan's time would have been better than ours I think.

I can let on a little (but not too much!), that for 16h 20m 27s we 'got lucky' with knocking out an awkward station much faster than we planned which helped, and later on in the day we made a connection with Chris on the phone saying "Your train is in 1 minute" and we're 2 minutes away, and yet somehow we made it. And if i hadn't, we'd have probably been 10 minutes/one Picc train down, and come in around 16:29/16:30 instead. Of course that '1 min' is a London Underground one minute, which is of course easily anything up to two minutes ...

Don't be too dismissive about evening Olympia's though. [ Checks own stats ] I've got a 16h39m an 16h43m time both using evening Olympia trains, so that's possible. You just work around it, and into your day. Don't fear Olympia!

Marc Gawley's time/claim is valid. Have since met Marc on many occasions, we have talked it all through, swapped notes, compared routes, and I can confirm that he is for real.

Final thought : the people now with this time have almost certainly read this forum, watched all the videos, googled for all the hints & tips that they can find, have excel spreadsheets just like we all have, have been on test runs, are fit and can run, have downloaded MY app (!), and are absolutely reading this thread now! :-) *waves*
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by MylesHSG »

Good point Geoff, I just assumed this was a first time luck thing, but they could have been trying for years without us knowing. The main issue with Marc Gawleys record is his newspaper video. It proves nothing and just itself makes me suspicious about his attempt, but I take your word if you have spoken to him in person.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by RJSRdg »

geofftech wrote:
MylesHSG wrote:Relying on an evening Olympia is a risky strategy, but it obviously paid off. I kind of agree with Kev on this one, to get the GWR it takes a certain dedication that in recent years Andi and Geoff have displayed. I still doubt Marc Gawleys attempt and I am sceptical on this one. I mean the amount of times for both Andi and Geoff I'm sure the tube has cocked up in a critical moment and all hope is lost. So these two come out of nowhere and take a hard fought record just like that? :shock:
Heh... thanks Myles! Indeed my thought is "Have they done this once and got lucky, or loads of times which we don't know about?". If it's the first, that's galling ... because so many of us (I'm thinking Al and a couple of others, not just me & Andy) know what it's like to have multiple attempts and for it all to go wrong - which is why I'd have to say to hope it's the latter.

I remember with myself & Neil in 2004, we got our luck making a train at West Ruislip off of Ickenham which I didn't expect us to make when a Met was cancelled at Uxbridge. If we hadn't of made that, Steven Karahan's time would have been better than ours I think.

I can let on a little (but not too much!), that for 16h 20m 27s we 'got lucky' with knocking out an awkward station much faster than we planned which helped, and later on in the day we made a connection with Chris on the phone saying "Your train is in 1 minute" and we're 2 minutes away, and yet somehow we made it. And if i hadn't, we'd have probably been 10 minutes/one Picc train down, and come in around 16:29/16:30 instead. Of course that '1 min' is a London Underground one minute, which is of course easily anything up to two minutes ...
That answers a question I'd been pondering for a while - whether the attempts represented by the record times were aiming at even shorter times which didn't quite work out,or longer times which turned up better than expected. (So far the best theoretical route I've managed to come up with is 16:34).
geofftech wrote:
Don't be too dismissive about evening Olympia's though. [ Checks own stats ] I've got a 16h39m an 16h43m time both using evening Olympia trains, so that's possible. You just work around it, and into your day. Don't fear Olympia!
Indeed - my 16:34 theoretical route referred to above can use either of the evening trains from EC to Olympia,or possibly even the Olympia-EC service that runs shortly afterwards.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by andytube »

Think Geoff is right. If you were doing the challenge, you'd be online to do your research. And if you type tube challenge into Google, this site comes up 5th in the results. So they must have seen this.

Is anyone going to go dectective and try and locate these 2 chaps? Start messaging people with those names on Facebook and Twitter. Some people don't even lock their Facebook accounts, so you can view their profile and even see who their friends are.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by palkanetoijala31 »

geofftech wrote:Marc Gawley's time/claim is valid. Have since met Marc on many occasions, we have talked it all through, swapped notes, compared routes, and I can confirm that he is for real.
well if not there is a good robot clone of him running around the underground!
geofftech wrote:Final thought : the people now with this time have almost certainly read this forum, watched all the videos, googled for all the hints & tips that they can find, have excel spreadsheets just like we all have, have been on test runs, are fit and can run, have downloaded MY app (!), and are absolutely reading this thread now! :-) *waves*
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Last edited by moley on 05 Apr 2015, 14:51, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Edited to reflect quote
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by The Orange One »

That was an open invitation to reveal yourselves, by the way!

I'm pretty sure Ronan McDonald is not the teacher from my school. I was back there two days ago and I did not hear about anything of the sort.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by hopeful traveller »

andytube wrote:Is anyone going to go dectective and try and locate these 2 chaps? Start messaging people with those names on Facebook and Twitter. Some people don't even lock their Facebook accounts, so you can view their profile and even see who their friends are.
That's awesome. I can't believe you volunteered like that.
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by Sam »

I can't believe that someone's name is a reason to doubt the legitimacy of this record. Not everyone who does the challenge is going to be a member of this forum, nothing in the rules says "in order to obtain the GWR, then you MUST join the tube forum".

This whole thread makes me laugh!! Fair play to the people who broke it in secret. Just like Marc Gawley, people of this forum really don't like it if it's not "one of our own" holding the record! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by mrredrunner100 »

it makes me wonder how many attempts happen without them being written up on something
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Re: GWR Site is reporting a new World Record time ...

Post by andytube »

There probably are a number of attempts that take place each year that we don't know about. But it would be nice if someone could get hold of them and direct them to this forum so they can at least say hello.
I took a quick look through a list of people called Clive Burgess on Facebook. None of them had locked down their Facebook settings, so I could see their photos and friends list. None had a friend called Ronan McDonald.
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