North by North East

If, 6 months ago, I had written a list of phrases that I never thought I would publish on a medium that (in theory) could be accessed by anybody in the world “I am a member of an orienteering club” would not have been on it. The notion was simply not on my radar. Yet here I am less than a week from taking part in the British Orienteering Championship in the far north of Scotland. That pretty much sums up what this year is about for me.

This challenge came about solely through my considering what I could take on in April after I was rejected from the London Marathon. I decided it would be nice to take part in a national or even international competition. The idea was easy but it is, not surprisingly, difficult to find a major competition taking place in a particular month that somebody with no experience or reputation in that particular event can take part in. However, you can with the British Orienteering Championship. Don’t ask what inspired me to type that phrase into Google, I don’t remember.

What I do know is that I thought that this one would be easy. Orienteering is just open air, a bit of running and looking at a map so, unless you’re a myopic, club footed agorophobe it can’t be that difficult. Can it? I now realise that, for someone who has never held a compass, let alone used it to read a map in a Scottish wilderness whilst running around a 10 mile course that just seems to comprise of a load of closely growing identical trees, the answer is yes. I am already resigned to coming last but I really don’t fancy getting so lost that search parties are sent out and The Sun publishes a comic paragraph about my stupidity just after the latest revelations about Carla Bruni’s racy past (memo to self – possible new challenge: get an article about self on page 3 of The Sun). It’s not just that I do not actually know what the rules of orienteering are. It’s not just that my sense of direction is appalling. It’s not even that I’m a bit out of practice where running is concerned making 10 miles the absolute limit my legs can handle. The thing is, I am sure my alarmingly expensive brand new compass is pointing North East.