tubechallenge.com

roblo97 wrote:so as everyone went to plan what to do, I was looking at the list trying to work out what was roughly near where and whilst trying to finish the pain au chocolate off.

Apart from the pain-au-chocolate, I think most first-timers lose quite a bit of time at the start trying to find everywhere. On my first R15 I think everyone had visited at least two other stations before I'd even found them on the map... I then managed to mess the start of that one up even more by not visiting the starting station properly and having to revisit it!

roblo97 wrote:....so as everyone went to plan what to do, I was looking at the list trying to work out what was roughly near where and whilst trying to finish the pain au chocolate off

Top tip at the start. As soon as the envelope is handed to you, just follow the others. They will lead you to your first train. You can then plan your route whilst on the train rather than standing around wasting valuable minutes.

Top tip 2. Pain au chocolate, Coke, McDonalds? I'm a bit worried about the diet of the young tube challengers these days. Have something to eat well before the start. Take drink with you but not fizzy or hot. Have lunch after you have finished, again saving valuable minutes.

I had a decent day. Surprised to find myself alone so quickly- some inspired dashing to the Jubilee Line made me notice Bond Street on my list, therefore I went north. Seems the inspired dashers went south! Still piecing stuff together, I noticed Bayswater so got off at Queensway. I dashed through closing lift doors and ran to Bayswater. Distracted by the departing Southbound I almost failed to notice the stationary northbound, I just about made it down the stairs and got on just in time after it seemed the train had been waiting forever for me!
At Paddington it was a Queens Park terminator I caught which dilly dallied in the platform after terminating, before the H&W pulled in. At Willesden Junction I made the dash down to North Acton and waited a while for an eastbound after watching the departing train from the overbridge. Onto Ealing B and a mediocre wait for the District to make a move. Saw Peter at Acton Town who was half way doing this loop the other way round. South Ealing to Barons court and a dash to Olympia for an 8 minute wait. At EC, down to Southfields and back up to Victoria, to Euston, and to Belsize Park via a change at Camden, where I bumped into Peter again. From here he decided to ride all the way to Waterloo and change, I thought it'd be quicker to change branches at Camden, but alas Peter finished two trains ahead of me at Canary Wharf.

now that this championship is nearly over any news on the dates for round 1 so more mortals can take part.

Thank you for your patience, I have had a difficult few weeks with family issues, long hours at work and other more needy commitments. I can now confirm the results for round 5 of the Random 15 Championship held on 22nd April 2017.

Round 5 was a twist round, and it was a case of adding London Underground stations in zone 3 into the mix (on top the the usual zones 1 and 2). Therefore the generator gave us:

--Green Park (Meet up)
--Bermondsey
--East Acton
--East Putney
--Ealing Common
--South Ealing
--Willesden Junction (low level)
--Paddington (Praed Street)
--Bond Street
--Canary Wharf (LU)
--Southfields
--Bayswater
--Sloane Square
--Kensington Olympia

13 challengers competed who split into 11 teams, in reverse order:

11th: Nick Gardner who started but aborted the attempt
10th: Clive Burgess: Finished but only visited 14 of the listed stations. Mis-read/marked down and visited another station (not on the list) in error.**
9th: Rob Lomas: 04:31:25 at Sloane Square
8th: Sam Inman: 04:14:01 at Chalk Farm
=6th: Tangy and Neil Ansell: 04:12:21 at Canary Wharf
=6th: Richard Standing: 04:12:21 at Canary Wharf
5th: Kevin Brown and Andrew Baker: 03:42:47 at Canary Wharf
4th: Andrew Chilcraft: 03:27:13 at Canary Wharf
3rd: Peter Smyth: 03:24:37 at Canary Wharf
2nd: David Edwards: 03:24:19 at Hampstead
1st: Hugo Marrow: 03:19:15 at South Ealing

**I initially vetted Clive's route and gave it the all clear (a time of 03:29:00) but I do thank Clive for his honesty and telling me after the results were read out that he had visited Ealing Broadway rather than Ealing Common, which I did not pick up upon when he went through his route with myself. There will be a more rigourous vetting process in future, this is not the first time I have done similar!

The league table, after 5 rounds, now looks like this:

1st: The Orange One (55 overall points) [5 rounds attended]
2nd: David Edwards (45) [5]
3rd: Peter Smyth (41) [5]
4th: Andrew Baker (27) [5]
=5th: Andrew Chilcraft (25) [5]
=5th: Clive Burgess (25) [4]
7th: Kevin Brown (24) [5]
8th: Tangy (16) [5]
9th: James Ross (15) [4]
10th: Nick Gardner (13) [5]
11th: Neil Ansell (12) [4]
=12th: Phil Parker (8) [1]
=12th: Richard Graham (8) [3]
=12th: Richard Standing (8) [3]
=15th: Damian Cook (7) [2]
=15th: Josh Nichols-Ageros (7) [1]
17th: Sam Inman (6) [2]
=18th: Alex Kneller (5) [2]
=18th: Chris (5) [1]
=18th: Matthew Cook (5) [1]
=21st: Rob Lomas (2) [1]
=21st: Michael Churchill (2) [2]
23rd: Richard Burrows (1) [1]
24th: Mingke: (0) [1]

As already announced, the final round of the 2016/17 season will take place on Saturday 3rd June 2017, please see separate discussion for details.

Tangy
The BERC