Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

Competitors gather at the Canterbury University car park on a chilly autumn morning. There are over 200 participants—young and old, from all walks of life, and, per the tradition, in all manner of costume. Everyone is friendly, but I can tell that most of the people are here to compete and win.

As competitors check in, a guide shouts out instructions. "Be warned when walking around at 3 a.m. in the pitch-dark—there are dangerous cliffs and bluffs within the playing field. Electric fences may or may not be on." He adds with a hint of sarcasm, "And the stags become territorial and extremely vicious at this time of year. Remember, deer paddocks are out of bounds.”

At the check-in, I meet a team of seasoned orienteers—two men and a woman who call themselves “the Oldies”—and they invite me to join them. We head out to the course and begin looking for our first marker. The small white disks are hidden in patches of tussock grass, buried under fence-posts, and submerged in cattle troughs. Our goal is to find as many white plastic markers as we can, and to write down the word written on the back. The team that completes the entire course in the least amount of time or finds the most markers in 24 hours wins.

As we move along this particularly difficult part of the course, I remember the words of a TWALK organizer: “If you went for a normal walk, you’d pick all the easiest routes. I pick the hardest ones. If people finish, it’s actually embarrassing. It’s supposed to be impossible to finish.” As a 42-year veteran of the sport, Pete Squires knows the ropes pretty well. "I came on the first TWALK in 1967,” he tells me, “and I've only missed four since then.”

This course has five legs, each between nine and 19 miles in length, with about 20 hidden markers each. Pete and the Oldies have been racing courses like this since they were students at the University of Canterbury. “I'll be 65 in two weeks,” Pete says with pride as he hunts for a marker in a marshy area. “And I don’t intend to quit any time soon.”

Night begins to fall and volunteers meet at a converted sheep-shearing shed known as the “hash house.” Most teams rest for a maximum of 30 minutes at the house, but I decide to hang around for a bit longer. Even as a fit 19 year-old, I can’t keep up with Pete and the Oldies!

Volunteers in the hash house stay up most of the night preparing and serving food to the competitors. “We have 1,200 muffin cups,” head chef James Pettingal tells me. “Some guys were here at 9:30 last night chopping pumpkin and other veggies, and we all ended up staying here till about 2 a.m.—it’s all good fun.”

No room has gone unused in the makeshift shelter. A first aid ward has been set up in one of the rooms, complete with catching pens, machine shears, and release chutes. Apparently, the competitors are tough, as first-aid provider Richard Hopcroft hasn’t had much work yet tonight.

The Oldies arrive at the hash house from their third leg, and it’s clear that their experience is paying off. "We're doing well,” Pete says. “We’ve been a team for, I don't know, bloody near 40 years. In our age and gender group we've been champions for a while.”

The morning sun lifts above the vast Pacific Ocean and slowly burns away the fog shrouding the Greta Valley. The clues are getting harder and the course is becoming noticeably longer. But Pete and The Oldies keep pushing on.

Finally, at 10:35 a.m., exactly 24 hours after the race began, the last team sprints to the finish line. After a brief rest, everyone gathers at the hash house for the final ceremonies and awards. Some people have passed out on the grass and others are massaging their blistering feet, but all enjoy a chance to relax in the glory of having successfully completed another TWALK.

Mock prizes are given out to the winning teams to raucous applause. This team receives a highly coveted prize: a leftover bag of uncooked pasta from the night before. This gets an especially big laugh.

“The Oldies” have again finished first in their division. “But this,” they tell me, “was just a nice warm-up for next weekend. There's the championship in Taupo and then the week after that there's a 12-hour one in Wanaka. And then there's the one I'm running a fortnight after." For Pete and his teammates, orienteering is truly a way of life. As long as these events are held, if you take a stroll in the hills of Canterbury, New Zealand, you just may see these self-proclaimed "old people" racing through the woods.