It’s amazing what a little Googling can do for you! After we dug out the old (15 years!) Evening Standard article from yesterday about the original ‘Beat the tube’ runners, it appears that that event is still taking place – and we think with maybe some of the same people?

The run from South Kensington to Fulham Broadway took place back in May of this year – and yes, the Evening Standard covered it!

Fulham run

The internet got very excited yesterday when a viral video doing the rounds showed a man getting off a Circle Line train at Mansion House and running along the streets to get back on the same train at Cannon Street.

We saw it, but it didn’t stop loads of people tweeting us telling us about it.

The thing is – it’s been done before, and we knew we had pre-internet evidence of it too tucked away in a storage box – so last night we dug it out and scanned it in – an instance of this happening fifteen years ago in 1999, and then a repeat performance a year later in 2000, as they attempted to make it an annual event.  The Evening Standard newspaper covered it both years.

(Click on the images for full size scans of the Evening Standard newspaper article)

1999 Event

The feat here though was even harder – you had to jump off the back of a District Line train at South Kensington, and then run the the 2.5 km down the Fulham Road to get back on the same train at Fulham Broadway station.  And what’s more, they had no running gear – they did it in business shirts & ties.

2000 Event

Would this still be possible today? We did some quick calculations.  The TfL journey planner suggests a train takes 11 minutes to travel this – although as we all know Earl’s Court (a bit like Edgware Road) is a bit of a Bermuda Triangle of the tube where anything can happen and trains can get held, so maybe you’d get a bit of extra time? Although Fulham Broadway has now dramatically changed with a new entrance that involves you running through a shopping centre and would add at least half a minute to your time.

Fast runners though can easily do a kilometre in 4 minutes, meaning that 2.5km should be doable in 10 minutes .. so yes! It’s still possible.

Perhaps the chaps in the YouTube video between Mansion House and Cannon Street would like to try this as well? Get in touch ..