Thank you for your enquiry regarding your intention to attempt the record for 'Fastest time to travel to all London Underground stations'.
The current record (current as at the date of this letter) is:
Category opened for applications for the tube network as of 23 December 2007 (i.e. following the closure of the East London Line as part of the London Underground on 22 December 2007). Minimum time: 18 hours 10 minutes
You may wish to check with us again closer to submitting your full claim to be sure that a new record has not been set in the interim.
A set of rules was also sent but these have not been changed or revised.
It does seem pretty sensible having a Minimum time, and I think they took my prediction of how much quicker it was to do the challenge without the ELL as I said on the phone.
No, I'm saying that whilst explaining that the pre ELL closure times and Post ELL closure times weren't comparable I mentioned that on my route it knocks between 20 and 30 minutes off the time, and seeing as the current record is 18hrs 25mins, its not close away from the 18hrs 10mins they have given. I didn't know anything about the minimum time arrangement until they contacted me today.
"Master Karahan" - I like that. Needs to be spoken in a Ming The Merciless voice for the full effect.
Anyway. I think this is fair enough - Guinness have always said in their general rules that "interesting firsts" don't count as records, and this way someone will have to achieve something subjectively comparable to the present record for it to be counted, rather than it being awarded to the first person to come along after the 23rd Dec comes round.
I assume 18h10m is supposed to be the *maximum* time they'll accept though, not the minimum
"This train is for King George the Fifth. So you can't go on it."
PFW wrote:can we get somebody else to veryfy this?
Feel free to ring them up, like I've been doing for weeks now trying to get Guinness to recongnise this issue before the line closed. Don't see why you think I'm being untruthful?
I think that seeing as we are losing an entire line it seems perfectly reasonable to set a minimum time that has to be set before the record can be awarded. I would say that 18h10m seems a very fair target as theoretically a time of sub 17 hours must be possible.
Here is the response that I received from Guinness
Dear Mr Brown,
Please note that as the East London Line will close on the 22nd of December 2007 we will rest this record and open a new record category from the 23rd of December 2007 with less stations to visit.
I agree with you hakam most of my runs it has taken 45 - 50 mins for the ELL section so getting a time sub 18h 10min should be quite easy I think a time in the region of 17h 30 min will be necessary to hold the record for any length of time.