Journey to the End of the Night

This was the event which drew me to Venice, and without it I don’t think I would’ve bothered with the trip. It was called ‘Journey to the end of the Night’: there was a 10km route around Venice with six checkpoints to go through, the aim obviously being to make it to the end but with the added difficulty of avoiding being caught by chasers as you go. When you’re caught you also become a chaser, so it’s basically a massive game of zombies. It started with were three chasers somewhere in the city and then went from there. For game mechanics, we all wore ribbons on our arms: everyone started with a blue one and when caught you surrender the blue one as a prize to the catcher and put on your red one. There were also some safe areas (namely, the three bridges over the main canal, the areas around each checkpoint, and a couple of big squares). The route covered the entirety of Venice (which is only four or five kilometres diagonally, but we zigzagged around a bit), and there were around a hundred people involved. Venice was fairly well suited as it was pedestrian and the bridges and canals made it interesting, but there was also difficulty with all of the alleyways and dead-ends and we had been told that our map wasn’t 100% accurate. There were normal people out and about the city too which made spotting runners a bit trickier and chases more fun (it felt a bit like a Bourne or Bond film running round and through members of the public).

Us listening t instructions (I’m back-left)

The participants
were almost all Italian: I stuck with three Germans (one from
Cologne, Finn, so I’ll be seeing him quite a bit over the next year) and
two from Munich, though I later found there was also a Russian and an
Australian. The rest of the participants were a mixture of Italians – I think
forty to fifty of them were parkour-people from the Venice region,
and the other half were non-parkour people. About twenty had
travelled from Milan, Turin and other north-Italian places to come.
Most participants  were aged 18-25, but there were a good number of
teenagers too.

We set off at
1930 from the North-West corner of Venice. The first checkpoint was
about a mile away to the east, but the four of us (Germans plus me)
decided to split from the stampede of people and take a slightly more
roundabout route. Nothing happened on the way to the first checkpoint
(which we jogged), but we were always be looking around and trying to be tactical with our route. We were fairly slow to the first
checkpoint because of our roundabout route, but at least we hadn’t
had any encounters with chasers (though I would guess there wouldn’t be many around the first checkpoint as that would be pretty harsh).

The second
checkpoint was a mile and a half south of us, almost on the opposite
side of Venice, but we again took a longer route and doubled back to
the west to then come round. One of the group was getting a bit
tired, but I wanted to press ahead, as we were already behind and I
didn’t want to get stuck behind a large number of chasers as people
ahead of us were caught. After a mile or so of winding our way around
Venice (at least a couple of miles running and having to consult our
map a few times), we had our first encounter with chasers: having
checked everything was clear, we walked across a bridge, only for a
couple of girls stood on the bridge to grab us; thankfully I was
at the back of the group so could back away. They weren’t really in
the spirit of the game, hiding their ribbons and looking like the
public, so one of the two who were caught said it didn’t count
(and I think she was right). Having run away from the bridge I was now on my own.

This is the map of Venice with checkpoints and safezones we were given

Having gone back just round the corner from the bridge, I spotted two people coming towards me from the way we’d come. I called out to ask if they were chasers, and when they didn’t reply I took off. Luckily, the one who ran after me was a sixteen-year-old girl, and I lost her quite easily by running round the block; I then crossed the bridge again, and thankfully the chasers who ambushed us earlier had gone. I carried on to the second checkpoint alone, again taking a roundabout route, with nothing else of interest apart from having to check the map a few times and not being particularly sure where I was.

Being at a disadvantage of being new to Venice, I think I found it a bit harder than most the Italians. Nobody knew their way around all of the alleyways particularly well, but certainly better than I did. It was a bit like orienteering, except that you were on the look-out for zombies, had to take care checking your map that you weren’t about to be chased, and that in running away it was hard to know where you were.

At the second checkpoint I took on some water, took a few minutes rest, and found out that about fifty people had already made it through this checkpoint.

The third checkpoint was to the south-east, on a peninsula of that part of Venice. I decided to head south to the coast, then work my way along it east, as this would be easiest to navigate – I had a compass with me so this meant I didn’t have to know where I actually was so long as I went the right way. On the way I joined with two other runners and we had another chaser-encounter: heading along a street, one turned the corner towards us. There was an almost-comedic freeze before we took off back the way we came; I got ahead of the other two and turned the first corner, and the chaser carried on straight after them.

I then made it down to the south-coast, and heading east, caught up with a group of a dozen runners. I carried on ahead of them as they were only walking and I wanted to make up some lost ground, knowing it would be harder further back as there would be more chasers. As I came towards another bridge (there are hundreds of them) I saw a couple of guys on it who looked like they could be chasers; they spotted me too, but there was enough distance that I took a side-road and didn’t notice them follow me. I then carried on round the end of the peninsula and then came west along the north side to the third checkpoint.

After the third checkpoint, it was looking like it was going to get tougher than the relatively-easy (chaser-wise, I’d run four miles or so) journey I’d had so far: the route meant heading back towards the second checkpoint to cross one of the bridges over the main canal, and though it was a safe zone it was a major bottleneck. Heading along the coast didn’t seem like a good idea, so I heading a bit inland and tried to head west through some alleyways. On the way I had another chaser-encounter: we faced off thirty metres apart, and in a sportsmanlike way he responded to my question of what colour he was (it having gone dark awhile previously) and paused for a fraction to give me a headstart. I took off alongside one of the small canals with him following me for about 150 metres, passing a few bridges, but unfortunately for me I hadn’t paid enough attention to see that the path on my side of the canal was running, and ended up stuck in a dead-end. This annoyed me a bit as I could have outrun the guy (I had put a bit of distance between us and could heard that he was more tired than I was), but it was my fault for not paying enough attention and seeing that I should have crossed.

I became a chaser, but by this point I think most people had been caught, and the fastest people were about 20 minutes ahead. I headed east to try and get between checkpoints five and six, bumping into the Germans again on the way. We split up again as they wanted to just head towards checkpoint six along a coast, and I, along with one other guy, wanted to head inland a bit to try and cut runners off. After about twenty minutes of not really knowing where we were and seeing nobody, we headed back to the coast and then towards checkpoint six. We’d taken to walking when we spotted a guy on the other side of a bridge running away from us, probably about 80m away. He looked pretty tired, but he had the headstart. We ran after him go down an alleyway off the street we were on, then guessed at a corner and just about spotted him go round the next, where he’d paused to check his map. He carried on away and spotted us over his shoulder when he was about 40m away and tried to escape. The chase is a bit of a blur, but we followed him round a few corners, over a bridge, alongside a canal, and then down another alleyway. After about 150m of chase the guy I was with had to give up and I carried on alone. I didn’t want to lose the guy I was chasing, but also didn’t want to sprint to early incase I couldn’t make up the gap between us and was too tired, so I went for a quick running pace to narrow the gap slowly. After 400m of fast running, he turned a narrow alleyway off the canal, and I put on some speed along it to catch him, by which point we were both flat out. I tagged him on the back, and then we dropped to the ground panting; he was worse than I was as I still had a little bit left in me, but he was pretty much finished. The chase was great fun – tunnel vision, memory a blur because I was only concentrating on catching him, and actually catching him definitely helped the enjoyment – however, the movies are definitely tricking us when the characters somehow have enough energy after a chase to fight!

My German friend caught up, but we were both pretty low on energy so just headed towards the finish, which still took about half an hour to walk. Having made it to three checkpoints and having a couple of good chases, I was more than happy to call it a day, and we didn’t see anybody else until right near the end.

When we got to the end, we found that only one runner had actually arrived, but about twenty chasers were there having given up. We were reunited with our bags (which had been transported from the start-point via boat) and waited around for another hour, drinking the rest of our water and eating the bit of food I had in my bag.

We were eventually led back through Venice to the start area to then get a bus to where we would sleep, but in true Italian fashion this took a some time. We had to wait until the official end-time of the event, and then everybody had to be sorted for the two different places people were sleeping. It also made it seem like it took longer as everything was explained in Italian, so we weren’t too sure what was going on. We then had to walk the couple of miles back to the bus, pausing to buy some food from a take-away in one of the squares, before travelling for 20 minutes by bus away from Venice. After the bus we had another walk to the place we were staying in, so it was about three hours after we had reached the end when we actually arrived (one of the Germans complained a bit about the lack of efficiency in getting us there, she was right but I was too tired to care too much).

The place we were sleeping was a bit of a weird one. It had been translated to us as “the fortress”, and there was a hall with about thirty camp-beds in it for the group of non-venetians to sleep in, though for some reason me and the Germans were given an actual room with real beds to sleep in. “The fortress” was a WW2 fort which was now run by either the local council or some sort of charity/cooperative, and we were sleeping there for free (or maybe really cheap, but it wasn’t for profit). The room we were in was some sort of bunk room, on the first floor along a corridor with a few different rooms with beds (though why none of the Italians were also here I wasn’t sure). We joked a few times that it looked like a horror film scene (it did), and one of the Germans went back to the main hall to sleep. I showered and got into bed at 3am.

The event was pretty good fun. I was glad I came to try it out, and though there wasn’t quite as much chasing as I had hoped (I hadn’t appreciated how difficult navigation would be!), it was still more than worth it. If done in the future, it would be greatly improved by giving the participants some more obvious clothing, like flourescent tshirts or glow-in-the-dark wristbands, but the difficulty of not knowing the city couldn’t be helped. It was a nice way to see almost all of Venice too, though I didn’t stop to appreciate all of the sights.

It was also a great way to exercise. Instead of going for a jog or doing a track session, it was more fun, realistic and varied. You didn’t mind about being tired because it was a game and there was a purpose, and the adrenaline in chases helped you to push yourself more than your normally would. I think more people would exercise if games were a common form of exercise – in parkour sessions I coach I’ve played some games a couple of times – though unfortunately “grown-ups” tend not to want to go and play tig.

I was impressed by the fairly professional organisation too. We each had a map with all of the checkpoints and zones as well as our ribbons, there were people at each checkpoint to check us off, they moved our bags from the start to the finish for us (there was no way I could have run with my backpack), and accommodation was sorted for us! It was also all free (though we could contribute) – I asked how it was funded and was told that the parkour association had used all of the money they had taken in over the last year to pay for it all!

Big thanks to Davide, the organiser and also my host, for looking after me, as well as all the other organisers and helpers from APTA Parkour!

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