Bob’s Night Race

This year we were invited to take part in Bob’s Night Race. We’ve known about this invite-only race for a few years and so we were pleased when we were asked to compete. I say ‘compete’ in the loosest of terms; the race has competitors of all abilities and the primary aim is to have fun. The concept behind the night race is simple, visit all controls, in the correct order on the map, in the quickest time. The only difference to normal orienteering is that the route should keep to footpaths and it starts at 11 o’clock at night!

We were surprised at first that there was little route choice between controls and we wondered whether this would mean that the event would be pretty straightforward and more like a running race rather than a navigation/route finding challenge. In reality, the route finding provided sufficient challenges and it kept us on our toes for most of the night.

Starting a race at 11 pm was something that I hadn’t done before. My body didn’t really seem to notice how late it was, even as we approached the hours of two and three in the morning, but I think I was a little more sluggish than usual.

The hotdogs at around halfway were a big help and a tasty change from cereal bars!