Zone 1 Race Report - Part 1, Vauxhall to Monument

So how did Tom and I get on with the Tube Race on Friday? Well, here's the first part of our run, from the start line at Vauxhall, through to Bank/Monument on the Circle Line (Here's a link to a 'blank' version of the map above, in case the other teams want me to post their routes at the end of the summary). Firstly, a big thanks to the Bike Shop just round from the entrance of Vauxhall Mainline Station, who let me use their toilet to 'empty' myself before the start of the race. From there, it was round to the entrance to the Underground to meet up with everyone, and get some gloriously Fake TV footage of us all standing in a line, then sprinting into the depths of the station. So now the BBC cameraman has the "start" of the race, and we all head down to the platform for the Start Proper. Thursday night had me look at the route I had sketched out, and I decided to ditch it and start again, this time going anti-clockwise round the system. For those wondering how I cam up with it, I built up small sections of routes, that could be done in any order, and then put together inn the smoothest way possible. This meant that if something did go wrong on the day, I had some alternatives sketched out. While I didn't have to change anything, I think Jody and Mark did. As predicted, the majority of the teams blasted out of the northbound Victoria line at Victoria, with 2 teams heading to go east, and the rest going west (as an aside, it wasn't till we were comparing routes in The Horse And Groom that Jody & Mark's strategy of heading straight up to King's Cross was revealed). The eastbound crowd (including Geoff and Neil) just missed a Circle line on the Platform, while Tom and myself caught the westbound just as it came in. No matter what route I planned, I was left with doubling back at either Sloane Square or St James Park. I'd decided that Sloane Square would be best. When we got there, we very nearly managed to grab the Circle line sitting there. If that had been the case, we would have had an early psychological victory as we pulled in on the train Geoff and Neil were waiting for. As it was, we were one train behind, but one station ahead. Next on the planned route was the "Elephant and Castle Loop" to get the Zone 1 stations that were south of the river. Coming along with us were Adham Fischer (the sprinter) and Steve Paull (the marathon runner). This little group stayed together all the way round the loop. There is one other sensible way to do the south stations, but that's for another route attempt. During this section, we managed to have an empty carriage (some moody TV shots), a massively long change (three flights of escalators) at Westminster, and one or two pieces to camera from myself discussing tactics and the maps. No idea how much will come out on TV, but I'll be getting a raw dump of all the footage in the near future. The BBC also had me 'wired up' for sound, so there's going to be a massive MP3 of me commentating as I was running along. After the loop, the longest change in the world. Arriving at Embankment, we carried on up to Charing Cross (around 800yards of tube track), crossed between platforms (maybe 5 yards at most) and then back down to join the Circle/District line to catch a connection to Aldgate / Aldgate East. The three groups were still together, still racing each other, and I'd managed to get a hole in the soles of my trainers. 40 minutes down, 19 stations visited, 44 to go, 7 teams to beat... The race continues.

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Comment Posted by: Angy
Hi Ewan. I need some tips and advice from you on how to use celltrack.opx (from Sourceforge) via OPL to tap GSM cell id information including the signal information for Nokia 7650.

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