It’s more challenging than traditional cross country running because the terrain is usually much rougher and there’s no path. You have to use the map and your compass to make sense of what is ahead and pick a route that suits you. That might mean that you run a little farther to stay on flatter ground; maybe running around a hill rather than straight up and over it. In a dense woodland course, you have to rely completely on the map and the compass because the trees block your view. The other fun thing is that you can run in the same area week after week but have a completely different race because the markers are in new places.
There’s one course through a beech wood that I love. The trees are big and old and give so much shade that it keeps the undergrowth down. This wood covers a big area and if there were no trees you’d see that the terrain was covered in hillocks and valleys. Whatever course they set, you know that some of the running will be uphill and some downhill and if you’re not careful you can find yourself retracing your steps because you’ve ended up in some dead end gulch. Add a few small lakes to the mix and you can see why it’s a favourite. Stamina and navigation skills are both tested to the extreme.
There’s one other wild card on this course; there have always been rumours that there are some places where the rocks are magnetic. Every time there’s been a race there someone gets lost and they always say the same thing.
Last time Paul West turned up at the finish two hours late and looking the worse for wear. The marshals were almost ready to send out search parties. There was talk of making us all carry GPS trackers in future, but then he turned up.
‘Sorry guys, something weird with the compass, lost my bearings completely.’
‘Yeah, but two hours Paul. Sure you didn’t have a nap somewhere?’
‘Definitely the compass. I’m gonna take two the next time.’
The banter went on all the way to the pub. The strange thing is that every guy that gets lost comes back with almost exactly the same script.
Compass — strange part of the wood — went on too long before he realised — took ages to find the way back.
Always the same story, give or take one or two details. There were times it almost felt like some sort of conspiracy, or maybe the guys latched onto that script as an easy way of saving face. Two things puzzled me, it was always guys who had the problem, but as many women ran this course and it never happened to them. The other odd thing was that it only ever happened to one person in each race.
None of that put me off running; it’s not as though they disappeared forever, or came back minus a foot or permanently stupid. Whatever the mystery was it didn’t seem to do any harm.
In many ways, it was my favourite course. I loved the silence of the big trees. There were birds; I’ve heard a chiffchaff and I’ve seen a tree creeper but somehow the sound of an occasional bird deepens the silence. The ground is covered by old rotted beech leaves that cushion and deaden the sound of your feet. My breathing, raw and rasping on the climbs, a little easier going down hill, intrudes on the silence and somehow it feels as though these trees, many of them three times my age, are smirking at my hasty laboured progress. These guys have seen it all before.
I didn’t notice when my compass led me astray. I was following a bearing, glancing at it every few strides and nothing strange happened. I was counting my strides, trying to measure distance and I knew should have been close to the marker. I couldn’t see it. Maybe I shortened my stride up that mound two minutes ago, I thought; or maybe it lengthened going down into this gulley. I kept running. The sides of the little valley rose as I went forward and then it curved, so I had to follow the land and to hell with the compass. After another hundred meters of winding narrow path, it opened out in front of a pool.
Ahead of me was maybe an acre of still dark water. The place where I stood was the only place you could stand, almost as though someone had made a private beach. A beech beach, I thought, almost laughing at the pun nature seemed to have wrought. All around the margins of the pool the shore was lost in the shadow of overhanging trees, almost as though the pool disappeared into some impossible forever land.
I stopped. This was not on the map. I looked at the compass and the needle was slowly circling. It was almost hypnotic. I’ve never seen it do that. I turned a full circle myself, rotating in the opposite direction to the compass. It made no difference. The needle carried on with a mind of its own, swirling slowly around and around and around.
There was a small sound ahead of me, and I noticed ripples. I stepped closer to the edge to see better, and a girl rose out of the water. At first, there was just her head and shoulders. She flicked her long hair away from her face and for a moment I thought I must have stumbled into a film set for one of those shampoo adverts. She rose out of the water and somehow although it felt like a fairy tale I knew it had to be real because whatever those princesses get up to they don’t show naked breasts.
She smiled; a knowing, enticing, welcoming, seductive smile that made my tired legs almost turn to jelly.
‘You look hot, why not come into the water?’ she said, stepping towards me and revealing that she was naked. ‘Take off those sweaty clothes and come in. You’re lost, your time this week will be rubbish, so come and cool off.’
The compass goes haywire, I thought, and they never talk about it, and it’s always guys.