First FNC attempt (16/06/23)

[RJSRdg]

Only an idiot would attempt an FNC during a heatwave, so I did!

Adham found me a great Airbnb in Chesham, not too far from the station. Opted for an early night but was woken at 11:30 by someone trying to get in (turned out that the previous booking mistakenly thought he had booked Thursday night as well!). Having been woken, took some time to get back to sleep, during which time I reviewed my route in my head, but misremembered it, which led to a crucial error on the day!

I'm not going to post the full route here as it's one I may want to use again though have messaged it to Tangy for verification.

Went from 10 minutes down at Watford (inexplicable red signal going on to the branch meant I missed the return service) to 15 mins up at West Ham, where I squandered that advantage (because I had prepared some alternative routes to cope with delays, but none to take advantage of being early!).

Signalling failure at Tooting Broadway led to some delays (trains were running despite announcements that the line was suspended), compounded by LU holding a "Ready" train full of passengers at Wimbledon for 10 minutes whilst releasing empty trains up the line without letting passengers on!).

A crucial missed connection, a bizarre decision by me to do an OSI when an easy change at another station would have done (caused by my misremembering the route in my night time ruminations) and an eight minute wait on the Bakerloo put me effectively 50 minutes down, so realising 18:23:19 was out of reach, I opted for a 10 minute wait for a double back from Olympia to HSK rather than run or get a bus. However as I polished off the remaining stations I realised I perhaps wasn't as far behind as I thought....

The record time passed just as I was pulling into Heathrow Terminals 2&3 and I finished at Terminal 5 in 18:30:32, pleased to have got a completion (and crucially, to have got to Terminal 5 in time to catch the last bus home), but also found myself rueing what could have been.

Having put off attempting an FNC several times owing to fitness concerns I actually found the physical demands of the Challenge relatively easy and indeed set PBs on a couple of runs.

Practically, I think I carried the right amount or water (with an extra bottle and some more bananas purchased at the Co-op at MHE). Food was perhaps a little lacking, in part down to the limited range of sandwiches in the Co-op. The top-up battery for my phone wasn't needed, but extra camera batteries would have been a good idea.

Would I do it again? Probably, but preferably not in a heatwave!

[al]

Great effort Richard. Your commitment during a hot spell is impressive! I never knew there was a Co-op at MHE, only a Waitrose. Good to know

[RJSRdg]

It's in quite a new building, directly outside MHE station, so there's enough time in the 6 or 7 minute turnaround at MHE to go out, do some quick shopping and get back again.

[GillagePeople]

The idea of doing the FNC in this recent heat, when doing it just in the relatively cool late April temperatures was enough to turn me into a living ball of sweat and deep breathing, genuinely makes me shudder.

Massive congratulations though

I brought more food and water than I fancied on the day. I think I was too tired/adrenaline filled to get hungry.

[RJSRdg]

It actually didn't feel as hot as I thought it was going to be (certainly not as hot as the R15 had felt a few days earlier).

But most of my running was done at either end of the CHallenge (outside the heat of the day) and for most of the warmer part of the day I was either above ground or on air-conditioned S stock.


Further analysis:

I finished 37 minutes behind the time I was aiming for and 7 minutes behind the current fastest time.

This actually breaks down quite nicely into 30 minutes lost following missing a very tight connection (and consequently missing the most efficient time to do the next part of the route) and 7 or 8 minutes lost to errors/misjudgements.

However had I not dithered at West Ham (where I was 15 minutes early!) I would have been 30 minutes up at Aldgate and onwards (assuming I missed the signal failure on the Northern Line) and the missed connection mentioned above wouldn't have been an issue.