Last fall I was lucky enough to have one of those memorable orienteering experiences that stay with you forever: planning the courses for the Calgary Sprint club championship. It doesn’t sound like much, but for the first time ever we would be orienteering at the Calgary Zoo. The race was to take place on a Sunday morning before the zoo opened to the public.

A few days before the event, I met up at the zoo with Sarah Brandreth who was putting finishing touches on the map. Even though the Calgary Zoo happened to be closed to the public for the day, they still let us in to explore as we wished. The zoo was my personal playground for the day.

Sarah showed me a few interesting spots for control placement, then I strolled around the zoo coming up with a course design. Along the way I had a conversation with a bald eagle, watched the baby giraffe and elephant, and saw mischievous macaques give the zookeepers a hard time. When I was ready to draft courses, I sat by the Siberian Tiger enclosure with my laptop. The young tiger was in a playful mood, batting around the rope swing. When he broke that he decided to practice his stalking techniques by using me as his imaginary prey. While I’ve been to the zoo before, this day I was able to experience it like I never have before.

My adventure didn’t stop there though. On the day of the event I arrived very early to set-up. It was still dark enough that I had to borrow a flashlight from the security guard. I was placing a control by one of the animal exhibits when a Lynx descended out of the early morning mist to check out who I was and what I was doing. A few minutes later I was jogging by the wolves and I guess they wanted their morning exercise because they ran right beside me. They must have liked all the action as later on they joined along many of the sprinting orienteers.

Timber Wolf at the Calgary Zoo ©Colin Hill

Oh yeah – there was an orienteering event. Even though it was officially a club championship event, I planned the courses to make the most of the ‘fun factor’. Due to the layout of the zoo, planning legs that offered route choices was difficult. It was important then to find control locations that were interesting but still required the orienteer to keep constant contact with the map. The courses also ran by as many of the animal exhibits as possible, thus adding to the ‘distraction’ factor. After the event (over brunch on the zoo grounds) it was interesting to hear who had seen which animals and who was seriously competing and didn’t pay any attention to them at all.

This fall the club sprint championship will return to the Calgary Zoo on September 20. This is a unique opportunity not to be missed – worthwhile to travel to attend just to say you once punched an orienteering control being guarded by a lion. I know I’ll be there again, running with the wolves.

Kalamunda trailhead ©Nicki Rehn

This Sunday, I’m going to get up really early and drive to the outer Perth suburb of Kalamunda and start running south.  Way south.  963km south.  Solo.  Unsupported.  In 19 days.  I’m going to fast-pack the entire length of the Bibbulmun Track, a spectacular continuous hiking trail that links Perth with the south coast town of Albany via remote bushland, virgin forests, and isolated beaches.

Fast-packing means that I’ll be taking as little as possible in a light-weight backpack (12 kg incl. water and food) which allows me to travel large distances each day — up to 60km.  Hike uphills, run down.  Stopping rarely.  Going from dawn to dusk.  Emptying my life of all but the trail, the simple necessities, and the journey.

Long Gully bridge crossing the Murray River south of Dwellingup ©The Bibbulmun Track Foundation

Fortunately, this particular trail has established basic shelters about every 20km of its length.  I’ll be sleeping in these when I can, or in my bivy under the stars, or occasionally in the luxury of a hostel in a couple of the small towns through which I’ll pass.

Beavis Campsite ©The Bibbulmun Track Foundation

I still don’t even know if I can walk an average of 51kms day after day after day, but I’m hoping that years of adventure racing and trail running and mountain climbing and marathons will help ease the suffering.  Or at least help me handle the suffering like an old pro.  I’ll let you know at the end of April when I show up in Albany … hopefully.

We’ve decided to include a blog on the new Break Away website for several really good reasons:

1. To have a place where the staff and close friends of Break Away can share some of their own personal adventures …even if they might at times seem to be a little “extreme” on the physical side of things!
2. To provide a forum for staff to express their current thoughts about team building adventures; and for clients to ask questions and to provide feedback about their experiences with us.
3. To have an efficient way to add dynamic content to the site, so that it never gets old, and it draws more readers who will visit often!

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