Overground Challenge including Barking Riverside

[al]

Saturday saw me with the opportunity to complete a challenge. As the whole day was mine, I thought I would try and set a decent first time on the Overground Challenge, now that it includes the newly opened Barking Riverside station. I was constrained by the need to start at Battersea Park at 0833, and finish at Watford Junction so I knew that it would be a beatable time even if things went perfectly. Spoiler: alas, they did not.

We set off from Battersea Park 5 seconds early, but lost a little time along the way meaning that my Plan A was out the window early doors. Never mind, Plan B was put into action. All was well until Crystal Palace, where a combination of being older than in my challenging peak and rusty with regards what I shall call Challenging Instincts led me to miss the train out by 10 seconds due to visiting the loo. Note to other challengers - the loo at Crystal Palace is a long way from the Overground platform!

Despondent at being 15 minutes down purely of my own foolishness, I amended my route to take account of this delay in order to hit a particular sequence of trains that was vital to securing any sort of decent time. This done, things progressed basically as expected apart from managing to get ahead by a train after achieving a -1 minute connection. This joyous moment led to a further example of rusty Challenging Instincts manifesting themselves, as at this point I should have adjusted my routing substantially, as it didn't work being 15 minutes out, only 30 minutes out. Karma obviously decided to punish me for being an idiot from this point on as I suffered a train being taken out of service at Hackney Downs, and no bus turning up for a critical connection for several minutes, leading to me losing 30 minutes. There was then a train that could have helped redeem things slightly if running late actually being outright cancelled, leading to the following train running late due to overcrowding and missing my next connection.

Things did calm down for the last couple of hours, to end up with a terrible time of 10h59m35s. I worked out after that if I hadn't missed the train at Crystal Palace, and that the bus service ran adequately at the point I really needed it to, that I could easily have obtained a time of 9h44m or so which I would have been really happy with given the sub-optimal start/finish. If I can find another day free I'll give it another go probably. It was interesting to see bits of London that I've not been to before, although travelling sideways (nearly) all day was annoying.