Orienteering, or racing from one spot to another with a map and compass, was developed in the early 20th century by the Swedish military. Orienteering has since transitioned into a sport, and you can find competing clubs in every country, though it still remains most popular in Scandinavia.
Czechs also seem to love this sport, and last Saturday we went to see what it was all about: we entered the childrens category, 3.5 kilometers on foot.
"Should take us 1/2 an hour" we sneered. The electronic start screeched, and we were off, pelting through a pine forest while people in funny wind-breaker type clothes were combing the underbrush everywhere around us, looking for their coordinates, labeled by an internationally recognized orange and white flag.
For someone who can't read maps (me) every giant hill came as a surprise. It often happens that you run up something, desperately looking for the next point behind a rock pile, which the "clue board" held onto your wrist by elastic shows with coded symbols, and you realize it's in a totally different place, up a totally different hill. 3.5 kilometers in hilly terrain? Turns out it's killer.
Five kids entered our category, and we managed to come in 3rd, after 56 minutes of ragged breathing, drenched sneakers, wild-eyed searching and sprinting over wet logs. Seeing as there were two of us, this wasn't exactly the quick finish we'd envisioned.
No matter. Old men finished the race sooner, and some awfully fit participants were racing as much as 12 kilometers with more than 20 coordinates to find. One woman finished with two giant mushrooms in hand, already designing her post-race dinner. Sport drink was handed out, and beer was for sale, and some older men changed their underpants in plain view, as I hear is the custom in Europe.
So, in sum, a race that uses your head. Or as a kid in a Youtube video puts it: "It's not like a cross country race where you're just blasting, it's a whole nother experience."
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