A team from the Royal Army Physical Training Corps took on world-class opposition at the 3-Day Gargano orienteering event in Italy recently.
Staff Sergeants Robin Harris, Sanju Kerung and Tom Steele, plus Capt Alan Harris, completed a series of urban sprints and longer forest runs as part of the competition, which was staged in Vieste on the Adriatic coast.
Keen to get more troops involved in the sport, SSgt Harris explains why it’s the perfect blend of military training and phys — without the heavy Bergans.
1. It helps improve your navigational skills, building confidence for exercises and operations. You learn to trust your bearings and gain experience of looking at contours and working out what that means for the ground. Events take place in different environments — urban, forest and countryside.
2. You must think and plan quickly. There might be 30 checkpoints and only an hour to hit as many as you can, so you need to work out the best route.
3. It encourages teamwork. In some events you have to work together to cover as many checkpoints as possible. You can send your fastest runners to the ones furthest away and your slower, less confident members to the closer ones.
4. It’s good interval training. Between each location there may be only one or two minutes of running, so you increase and decrease your pace all the time. One minute you’re jogging along slowly, working out where you are, and the next you’re sprinting towards a marker.
5. It takes your mind off the running. Some routes in Italy were three hours long — if I was going out for a run for that length of time, I’d really have to mentally prepare. But you have so much to think about, plus it’s broken down into points, so it’s not so much of a slog.
6. No heavy loads. All you need is a map and a compass.
Want to get involved?
Visit the British Army Orienteering Club website: https://baoc.info/
