tufnellpark wrote:
Andrew and Richard joined me for my second attempt. Same result at Liverpool Street. The Central line interchange took 9 mins but we continued and I recorded a respectable 00:50:52. Only then did I realise that I had caught a Circle train and not the District at Embankment, so I disqualified myself and it was back to the start at Farringdon.
Strictly speaking, you didn't realise you'd caught a second Circle Line train until Andrew and I met you again at Farringdon and told you ...
As for me, my first blunder was thinking the event started at 18:30 (though I probably couldn't have left work any earlier than I did and given the problems at Liverpool Street I probably would have had to abort all earlier attempts anyway).
So my first attempt started on the 18:32 from Farringdon (wondering why none of the other 'usual suspects' were there!), rather a slow progression to Liverpool Street, where first of all I got lost owing to bad signage, then like everyone else I discovered that the escalators down to the Central Line were shut and the TfL staff were telling people not to use the Central Line. Popped outside and made a quick call to Tangy for clarification of the rules. Tangy asked me to check exactly which sections of the line were closed. I found a member of TfL staff who told me the line was open, and pointed me back across to the escalators which were now open! However in view of the earlier crawl and the amount of time wasted, I opted to head back to Farringdon (where I met Andrew and Clive) and start again.
Second attempt had a better run into Liverpool Street, where Andrew showed me an alternative route down to the Central Line and where we discovered that - guess what - the platforms were closed again! Andrew and I attempted to sneak through the ticket barriers anyway, but got sent back by the TfL staff. I called across to Andrew to suggest that perhaps it was best to abort that attempt too, however I think by then he'd already figured out his blinder of a route with a Liverpool Street start, taking out all the time lost at the barriers.
At that moment the platforms reopened, so I opted to carry on, only to discover that my earlier attempt to sneak through had invalidated my Travelcard! So I had to find my way to a manned gate and get through that way. Caught up with Andrew and Clive on the platform though and stayed within a respectable distance of them (I'd tweaked my ankle on the stairs at work earlier in the day, restricting my running ability) until Clive took the wrong train at Embankment and I lost Andrew on the secret staircase at Westminster.
Green Park, Oxford Circus (great change there!), Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square followed for a completion of 53:33, then on up to Farringdon via KX to start again.
At Farringdon Clive and Kevin were waiting and shortly afterwards Andrew turned up, leading me to think at first that I had somehow got a quicker time than him, but this l turned out to be due to his master stroke of restarting the clock at Liverpool Street and hence finishing his run later.
No issues to Liverpool Street, where we had a 7 minute wait for the next westbound train. At Embankment we met Steve and Hopeful, who travelled with us to Westminster where Steve tricked me into using the middle (non-working) escalator, losing me time on the others and leading to my missing the Jubilee (never realised how disorienting it is running on a stationary escalator - probably worse than running on one going the wrong way!). However subsequent changes worked out fairly nicely with a final time at Leicester Square of 49:01.
In my excitement with only a 1 minute wait for a rammed train I squeezed on and headed....... The WRONG WAY 
So doubling back at Bethnal Green I headed back to my starting station for attempt no. SIX which was just inside the window at 20:21...
