What does that person have wrapped around their lower legs? Neoprene? Kevlar? Looking around at the other competitors waiting to start the British Orienteering Champs at Grizedale in the Lake District, I see calf protection is a common choice. My own calves are clad in thin socks. Apparently I can expect them to get shredded today.
The whispered conversations around me are all offering the same advice. “Stay out of the dark green.” Staying out of the dark green is pretty much my orienteering strategy. Since starting orienteering in fact, I would go as far as to say yellow is my new favourite colour.
A very long and silent five minutes in the starting boxes ends when I pick up my map. It is shades of green - minty fresh or forest hell.
I try to stay out of the dark green, but it finds me anyway. By the third control I am snapping branches with every step and ducking under the thicker ones, moving through the forest with all the agility of a stone statue. Twice I am yanked backwards by a branch that catches behind my hair bobble.
I am in awe of anyone who can run through this - and also of anyone who actually finds this fun.
Control 7 sees me cross a smooth, wide path - bliss. I walk up and down, trying to spot an area where the brambles on the other side look least vicious. Do I really want to find control 7? Apparently, yes. I didn’t drive 6 hours to be here to quit partway round. I resign myself to the brambles, and wish for Kevlar calves.
The light green course is 3.7 kilometres, but I clock 6.2. (Well, I needed to get my weekly mileage up anyway.) Total time: 108 minutes. Logging it as a run on Strava is surely grounds for account suspension.
Back in the field, my daughter is pulling bits of tree out of my hair when a teammate appears with a cut a few millimetres from her eye. Neoprene calf guards would have been pointless, I realise. I might have waded more boldly through that bramble patch, but to make a real difference I’d have needed a full wetsuit and a neoprene balaclava.
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