Running City

Run your city, know your city

Its organizers call it a game, but for participants this is a serious adventure. It is not an endurance test, but you will exert yourself. At your disposal you have your legs, bicycles, roller skates, scooters, roller sneakers, and an entire city, strewn with riddles. It is Running City, the urban orienteering competition that has become Europe’s most popular game, and it has just taken place in Moscow for the eighth time.

Those who have not heard of Running City look around them in surprise, wondering why so many people are out and about on Saturday morning, wearing numbered badges around their necks. Why is everyone walking, running, biking, riding with such intense concentration? They are engaged in a serious business: playing.

It is early saturday morning, a time when the city sleeps. But today, April 21, it is unusually crowded in the area around Moscow’s University of Geodesy and Cartography near the city center. Stranger still, everyone is smiling. All these friendly folks are Running City participants. Conceived in the late nineties by Igor Golyshev, a computer programmer from St. Petersburg, the first games took place in that city in 2000, and they gained immediate popularity. The event combined local cultural knowledge (one, for instance, followed routes from the books of Dostoyevsky), inclusiveness (a range of categories open to people with different levels of physical or athletic ability), and a questing spirit, with the opportunity to walk through beautiful St. Petersburg. The goal was to get to know one’s city better, and to discover its secrets in the company of friends. Players visit checkpoints marked on a map, some of them hidden, and the course is timed.

But athletic form is far from a primary consideration. Nastya, 18, Irina, 17, and Lena, 18, are journalism students at Moscow State University. This is their third Running City, and they laugh when asked if they hope to win. “Our goal is just to make it to the finish line,” they answer, smiling. “Last year we played as Sphinxes. We only got through five riddles, and we walked for more than 12 hours. We couldn’t feel our legs, but we learned so much about the city we could be tour guides. And even more important, we met so many great people! This year we’re playing as Angels, and we’re hoping to get through more stages.”

The Sphinx category, for those who wish to be intellectually challenged, gives the route in riddles such as: “The site of a battle between the forces of False Dmitry II and Vasily Shuisky, this street was formerly a river.” (The answer: the River Khodynka once ran next to what is now Khodynka Field. Today the area is a jumble of Peschanye (sandy) topography... Angels is an easier, riddle-free category.

Online registration generally begins two to three weeks prior to the event at [www.runcity.org]. This year it reached full capacity and was closed a week before the game. I signed up a month ahead, selecting a convenient start time and a comfortable category: Lions, a light, untimed walking course of about 27.5 kilometers. Alexei, 27, a musician from St. Petersburg who plays tuba in the military orchestra, and Anton, 26, a craftsman, were also lucky. They registered as soon as they heard about the event, and are here in full gear, with bicycles, athletic wear, helmets and protection. They are participating as Horsemen. They are cheerful and enthusiastic, but they tell me that they don’t know Moscow well and have no hopes of winning. Their goal is to get to know the city better.

Sergei, 26, a programmer, and 25-year-old Alexei, a physicist from Dubna, (a city north of Moscow that is home to a nuclear physics research center) have an entirely different attitude. They’re here to win. They have joined the team led by Yevgeny, a 26-year trolleybus driver, and are pinning their hopes on his knowledge of the city.

Elena, 43, and Sergei, 48, are chemists from Obninsk, a scientific research city near Moscow. They are friendly, athletic, and extraordinarily appealing. This is their third Running City, and they are playing as Sphinxes, with experience and prior wins to their name. “We really like the high level of the challenges. We can go from a riddle about the Tarkovsky house, to a logic puzzle, to something that tests our attention to detail. We meet wonderful people, and we go home at midnight feeling absolutely happy.”

The courses range from 17-30 kilometers, depending on the category: Lions travel on foot only. Griffins run or walk, but may not use any form of public transport. Atlases and Angels are allowed to use public transport, as are Sphinxes and Armored Cars (“Broneviks”). Horsemen ride bikes, and In-line Skaters skate. The most physically challenging categories are the Griffins and Atlases, and these players resemble marathoners. They are serious competitors, heading off at the starting line with maps and GPS devices. The lighter categories, Lions and Angels, include families with children and babies in strollers. This is the fourth Running City for mathematician/scientists Nastya, 26, and Ilya, 29, but it is their first time playing as Lions. They used to skate the course, but this year they have brought their six-month-old daughter Tanya. They don’t expect to reach the finish line, as Tanya will need to be fed and put down for her nap, but they look forward to four or five hours of walking.

Often the object of a search is an unusual architectural object, like this log-lined courtyard near a Russian restaurant, which appears right alongside a modern advertisement.

The course is kept secret until the start of the event. Each category sets off from a different section of the park at the University of Geodesy and Cartography, and starting times are staggered. Each team receives an itinerary and a control book. Tasks vary according to category: a Sphinx clue might read, “In a certain region of Moscow there are three streets named in honor of one occasion: one street is named after the event itself, the second after its participants, and the boulevard after one of its primary heroes. What is the name of the boulevard?” (Answer: Dmitry Donskoy Boulevard, which is in the South of Moscow near Kulikovskaya and Ratnaya streets, all named in honor of the Battle of Kulikovo Pole (field) in 1380.) A question for the Lions would be simpler: “Go to 28 Stremyanny Lane, block 1. There is a structure to the right of the building. How many squares make up the teapot?” (Answer: There is a teapot pictured on the pediment made up of four squares.)

Today, Running City is not just a pastime for enthusiasts. For five years now, it has been a full time job for a number of people – directors, race organizers, course designers, and publicists. It is made possible by sponsors, including the British Embassy. But the driving force behind Running City is its friendly, organized and continually growing team of volunteers. One event requires the work of 25 to 100 volunteers, who organize and test the course, check participants’ control books along the way, and so on.

Sometimes the object of the search is humorous, as here – V.A. Lukinova is “Miss Lips 58” – at an apartment building in the center of Moscow that still uses engraved signs for inhabitants.

Running City now takes place in more than 40 cities in 7 countries from Western Europe to Baikal, attracting anywhere from 100 to 6,000 participants. The games take place several times a year in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kiev, and Helsinki. Some events are themed, such as “Running City Mini,” in which every team must include a child, “Elementary,” and “Night in the City.” The March 2011 event in St. Petersburg, named “500 Days to London,” drew about 350 participants. The course led to spots associated with British or Olympic themes. In addition, smaller events now take place in Vyborg, Tver, Magnitogorsk, Yaroslavl, and Irkutsk. France’s first Running City took place in 2011 in Toulouse; July 14 will bring it to Riga for the first time; and plans for 2013 include games in Munich.

The cost of participation is 700 rubles, or about $24, for a team of 1 to 4 players. All participants receive itineraries and badges, and must provide their own maps and other support materials. There is already a large community of enthusiasts who travel from city to city to take part. At this year’s event I met people from St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Yaroslavl, Tula and Kiev.

Zhenya, a psychologist who brought her children, Galya and Grisha, said to me at the closing of the event, “Think how many people were out today, on foot, bikes, scooters, the metro… all cheerful, all smiling at one another – what a lovely sight! I think that’s what I like best about these games: the number of people enjoying themselves, enthusiastically running around the city, solving riddles, counting bay windows, copying down years from monuments and apartment numbers in buildings…”

I walked all day – about 7 hours – and was charmed by a city which, it turns out, I did not know very well at all: the artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s wooden house, built according to his own sketches, still stands in Moscow! There are pre-revolutionary signs with old street names, Catherine the Great’s Petrovsky Putevoy palace, amazing statues, plates, tablets to be marked off in the control book, beautiful buildings, panels, bas-reliefs, and many, many lovely people. RL