What went down at Nike’s mysterious Desire Path

At 1am on the morning of the summer solstice, Dazed joined blindfolded runners on buses to an unknown destination. Here, we would be undertaking the most mysterious of side-quests; The Desire Path by At Last Atalanta and Nike, a 35km-long “mystery navigation race system”. Confused? Us too. Here’s what went down.

Runners were issued with a special-edition mapazine (courtesy of Orienteer Mapazines’ editor-in-chief Rory Griffin), which revealed two things. Firstly, At Last Atalanta is a collective of London-based ultra runners and running obsessives, all of whom work in the creative industries. The mapazine also detailed the challenge at hand, The Desire Path, a mixed-terrain race across trail and road, which relied on strategy and instinct.

Part trail run, part road race, the 35k out-and-back route took runners from Epping Forest through the city, finishing at Nike and Palace’s new South London community space Manor Place. The journey was broken down into checkpoints dotted from Epping Forest to Hackney Wick, Tower Bridge to St Paul’s Cathedral to Manor Place. All runners — tracked by the organisers using GPS — had to pass through each checkpoint in order to complete the challenge, with checkpoints revealed, one by one, along the way.

The term “Desire Path” refers to the short cuts made when people repeatedly walk their own route rather than the one which has been designed. The Desire Path invited athletes to map their own journeys, giving them the destination of the next checkpoint, but not the route to get there.

There’s no getting around it — the trail was long. And, with checkpoints dotted throughout the 35KM, there really were no short cuts. But given the freedom to run our own routes between the points, the challenge focused less on personal bests and more on problem-solving and resilience. The moments we got lost? All part of the plan. Which made me feel marginally less bad when I realised that I had lost both my GPS tracker and AirPods somewhere in Epping Forest.

Over 100 runners set off on the challenge, a guestlist curated by casting director and ultra runner Oisin Ru-Cuchllain. Among them, Rory Griffin, a photographer, director, and editor-in-chief of Orienteer Mapazine (and the creator of The Desire Path mapazines), Randa Kherba, a research-based menswear designer whose work explores “human resilience in extreme conditions”, Jade Jackman, a director working in action and sports and the founder of Babes with Blades, a female-led film collective making and celebrating action, and Colin Carlton, the man behind the store Homerun NYC, which he co-founded with Tokyo graffiti writer WANTO.

Extreme conditions — like zero hours sleep, 35km and 30 degree heat — need advanced engineering. Luckily, we were given systems of dress, meaning the freedom to construct monochromatic looks from Nike’s AeroSwift collection, bespoke printed with graphics by At Last Atalanta with custom kit design courtesy of designer Esme Marsh. Think: pleated running shorts, cropped tank tops and race-ready Nike Pegasus 42s.

The race culminated at the finish line, Nike and Palace’s space Manor Place, where exhausted runners celebrated with medals by Louis XXX, then immediately refuelled with coffee, juice and breakfast before visiting the recovery zone for red light therapy, deep compression boots, massage guns, foam rollers and even a cryobath. Exhausted, elated, we headed back home for some well-earned sleep at 10am.

Click through the gallery above to see more from The Desire Path.