A dibber in one hand, a compass and map in the other hand. So far so normal - but I was actually running. Yes, running. It felt amazing. Was this what everyone had been going on about, the magical buzz I had seen on faces when they emerged tick-covered and scratched from their courses?
The Dufftown Scottish urban orienteering league event was my first attempt at urban, and urban meant streets. A few woods too in this one, where I dutifully got lost, but the street parts were so much fun. There is nothing to beat seeing a little orange and white flag hidden behind a bin in the nook of an old school building. What a feeling! Run in one way just where the hedge finishes exactly as promised on the map, and back out through the open gate to the car park. Superb.
The big drama of the day announced itself to us as we stood on the start line. Control 219, we were told, might be where control 224 should be - or it might be fixed by the time we got there.
It is exactly situations like this that would deter me from ever taking responsibility for putting out controls. Mistakes happen - and as one fellow mum put it, “Orienteers do seem to have strong opinions.”
Happily 224 was exactly where it should be by the time I got there, but early runners had not been so lucky.
Looking at the results later, what I found interesting was that of the early starters who arrived to find the unexpected control number, the response was split by age. Juniors saw a number they weren’t expecting and hunted around for the correct one, which turned out to be just the other (wrong) side of the building.
Experienced seniors, meanwhile, knew they were right and the control was wrong and they were damned if they were going to hunt around for a missing control. They punched the wrong number in the correct location and moved on.
It’s difficult to imagine getting to the stage where I have so much confidence in my own navigation that I would believe it over the control. Watch this space, I suppose.
Meanwhile, there’s a local urban league coming up and I can’t wait. Here’s hoping I don’t find any unexpected control numbers.
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