Random 15 Championship 2023/24: Round 6

[tangy]

The last round of the season thus your final chance to gain points for the leaderboard. This round will also double up as Event 6 of Tube Olympics 2024 so as well as points, medals will also be awarded to the top 3 finishers of this round.

If you are new to all of this:
Welcome to the 2023/24 Random 15 Championship. I am your host (commonly known to regulars as the BERC when I am hosting Random 15 challenges). The Random 15 challenge is just that, visit 15 randomly selected stations that feature on the Tube Map (usually within zones 1-2 and using the Underground network only). There will be certain rounds within the championship that are a variation of this such as adding an extra zone or network e.g. DLR onto the challenge. So are you ready to take on the Random 15 championship?

The rules and scoring are unchanged from previous seasons but if anyone is not familiar with them, or needs a refresh, you can view them here: http://www.explorerticket.co.uk/tubecha ... 5rules.htm

Details for round 6:
When: Saturday 27th July 2024 12:30 UK local time.
Variant: Normal round, 15 LU only stations in zones 1 and 2.
Starting at: Edgware Road (Bakerloo), meet in the ticket hall street side of the barriers.
Post challenge pub: The Blue Posts, 81 Newman Street, Marylebone W1T 3EU (in between Oxford Circus and TCR, north of Oxford Street) for prizes and closing ceremony for both Random 15 and Tube Olympics. Evening meals available upstairs from 17:00.
Time limit: Normal round, 4 hours..

Closures affecting the challenge (correct at time of posting):
Piccadilly: No service Cockfosters - King's Cross.
Waterloo & City line: Usual weekend closure.

Other closures to be aware of:
Overground (West Anglia): No service Hackney Downs - Chingford
Greater Anglia: No service via Clapton, Stansted trains diverted via Seven Sisters and Hertford East revised to terminate at Stratford via Tottenham Hale. Seven Sisters station will likely have crowd control measures in place.

Please respond below if you are taking part.

[Going Underground]

Attending: GU
parkrun: Morden, GU
brekkie: Harvester (2 mins from Morden parkrun)GU

[JamesWright]

I will be there.

[JackW]

Hi. I will be there, and am bringing a friend. It's our first time taking part in a R15, looking forward to it! What time do people usually start arriving?

[Oggm]

Hi. I will be there, and am bringing a friend. It's our first time taking part in a R15, looking forward to it! What time do people usually start arriving?

People start arriving from 12:15 to 12:20 usually.

[Lunaticonthegrass]

Hi. I will be there, and am bringing a friend. It's our first time taking part in a R15, looking forward to it! What time do people usually start arriving?

People start arriving from 12:15 to 12:20 usually.

But aim to be early. We start at exactly 12:30 and there's always a few things to do beforehand. I'd suggest aiming to be there for midday, especially if you're traveling from outside London.

[JamesWright]

My route: Edgware Road > (Bakerloo) > Maida Vale > (Bakerloo) > Oxford Circus > (Victoria) > Green Park > (Victoria) > Warren Street > (Victoria) > Oxford Circus > (Central) > Notting Hill Gate > (Circle) > Gloucester Road > (District) > West Brompton > (Run) > Earl’s Court > (District) > Stamford Brook > (District) > Monument/Bank > (Northern) > London Bridge > (Jubilee) > Waterloo > (Northern) > Kennington > (Northern) > Clapham South

It felt a bit wrong doing the fiddly bits on the Vic visiting Oxford Circus three times, but any alternative routes I can think of are just as slow, in theory at least. My mental map of Oxford Circus was inaccurate so I may have lost a train here — on my way home I made sure to refamiliarise myself with the layout there. The Stamford Brook turnaround took a while too. The main cause of time loss happened at London Bridge. I arrived at the Jubilee line platforms to find the Westbound platform completely rammed with people. Instead I went East to Bermondsey where I found several dozen other people doing the same thing as me by doubling back. This congestion set me back by 2 or 3 trains, and I was forced away from the doors, costing me another half a minute at Waterloo.

Congrats to the winners on a superior route, and congrats to Tangy on the championship!

[Capelblue]

Excitement was high for the final round of both the R15 season and the tube olympics as we gathered at Edgware Road (Bakerloo) station for the start. We made the decision that we would go straight through the barriers and into the lift at 12:30 and on opening the envelope and spotting Maida Vale we, along with it seemed the rest of the challengers, headed for the northbound platform to head up to Maida Vale where all enjoyed a pretty efficient double back. It was now that routes began to deviate, we made the choice to change to the sub-surface at Baker Street, and only Tangy did the same, heading down to Euston Square for the run to Warren Street. Tangy beat us to the station, but we got onto the same train, but crucially Tangy's speed allowed him to get to the correct door position for the change to the Central line at Oxford Circus. Here this told as we got clogged up in the tunnels by the crowds and by the time we got to the Central line platform there was no sign of Tangy. We got a train fairly quickly and headed down to Marble Arch for a double back, here our luck was out as there was no eastbound train for 5 minutes, and things got worse at Bond Street where a corridor junction with no sign cost us precious seconds changing to the Jubilee line and we missed a train by seconds and had to wait 6 minutes for the next one. We passed through Green Park, Westminster and Southwark meaning we had done 9 of the 15 in little over an hour, but here we made our mistake, we chose to go and do the western District line stations and finish at Clapham South rather than the other way round. We changed at London Bridge, and then again at Bank to go to Monument where we picked up an Ealing Broadway train and ran all the way through Cannon Street, Earls Court and Ravenscourt Park before doubling back at Stamford Brook where we had another 6 minute wait, back to Earls Court where we had a good change to get to West Brompton bumping into Tangy who was not happy to see us (I guess he didn't realise we still had to go to Clapham !). Here we dithered for 10 minutes, there was a Southern train showing which would get us to Balham quickly, but it was late and no time showing, the first district line train was going to Edgware Road so we let Tangy go on that hoping that the Southern train would come in, it didn't so we got the next Upminster train, changed at Victoria and Stockwell and finished at Clapham South in 2:37:11.

We had some bad luck with changes, made a bad decision with our route so it was no surprise really that we came in last, the only surprise is that we were as close as 20 minutes to the winners !

Congrats to Kev and A2, and particularly to Tangy on his R15 season win, 56 points out of a maximum of 60 is phenomenal.

[Going Underground]

Pleasantly surprised to win this round along with the Gold Medal in what could be an Olympic record ?
So we quickly saw Maida Vale and joined every one else in the double back game.
Looking at the central London stations and being a hot day we decided on a further mini series of "double backs", so Maida Vale Oxford Circus (a few station to give us time to formulate most of the route) Marble Arch Warren Street Green Park London Bridge Bank run to Monument Cannon Hill run to Bank (completing a little triangle) Clapham South Clapham Common 95 bus Clapham Junction overground West Brompton Earls Court (where and Ealing Broadway slammed in our face and a 7 minute way for the next one) Stamford Brook

[tangy]

The results of round 6 of the 2023/24 Random 15 Championship held on Saturday 27th July 2024. This was the last round of the season.

This was a normal round, so 15 LU stations within zones 1 and 2 only.

There were 13 challengers split into 7 teams:

7th: Ian McIntyre and Ian Imrie - 02:37:11 at Clapham South.
=5th: Andrew Chilcraft - 02:28:19 at Clapham South.
=5th: James Wright - 02:28:19 at Clapham South.
=3rd: Jack Wheeler and Isaac Harland - 02:20:50 at Clapham South.
=3rd: Tom Hardy, Edward Hill, Josh Valdez and Pascal - 02:20:50 at Clapham South.
2nd: Tangy - 02:20:17 at Stamford Brook.
1st: Kevin Brown and Andrew Baker - 02:16:24 at Stamford Brook.

The final standings in the leaderbaord:

1st: Tangy (56 points) (6 rounds attended) - worst score of 5 deducted.
2nd: Andrew Chilcraft (45) (6) - worst score of 0 deducted (no points drop).
3rd: James Ramsbottom (41) (4)
=4th: Ian McIntyre (35) (6) - worst score of 2 deducted.
=4th: James Wright (35) (6) - worst score of 1 deducted.
6th: Andrew Baker (31) (5)
7th: Kevin Brown (30) (4)
8th: Ian Imrie (27) (4)
9th: Milo Ogidel (14) (3)
=10th: Glen Bryant (13) (2)
=10th: Rhys Jackson (13) (2)
=10th: Peter Smyth (13) (4)
=10th: Vincent Karthaus (13) (3)
14th: Rhys Benjamin (12) (2)
15th: Richard Standing (11) (3)
=16th: Edward Hill (10) (4)
=16th: Tom Hardy (10) (4)
=16th: Joshua Valdez (10) (4)
=19th: Pascal (8) (1)
=19th: Jack Wheeler (8) (1)
=19th: Isaac Harland (8) (1)
=19th: Yifan Luo (8) (2)
=23rd: Michael Tsang (7) (3)
=23rd: Andy JS (7) (4)
=23rd: David JS (7) (4)
26th: Matthew Cook (6) (1)
27th: Michaela Mrockova (4) (1)
=28th: James Beck (2) (2)
=28th: Sam Beck (2) (2)
=30th: Brady Sahr (0) (1)
=30th: Nick (0) (1)
=30th: Kate (0) (1)
=30th: Stephen Moore (0) (1)
=30th: Muadh Zeroual (0) (1)

Thank you everyone for attending, albeit for one round or all six and hopefully see most of you again in September for the new 2024/25 season.

Tangy.
The BERC.

[Going Underground]

Thanks for organising Martin and on winning the championship by some margin
That was a close run thing on Saturday and possibly a kinder set of stations that could be hoped for