Running Man's course for the recent Street O hosted by the Tucson Orienteering Club

I recently ran a race that had no set distance, no set course and no set starting time, but still was instructed to complete the race as fast as I possibly could.  Oh and along the way I had to find and identify 8 – 12 markers along the course.  Welcome to competitive orienteering.

My friends in the Tucson Orienteering Club recently hosted a “Street O’, an orienteering race designed to introduce the sport to us non-orienteers.  Combining map reading, racing, logistics and planning, Orienteering can be enjoyed at a leisurely pace or as a competitive, fast race.  My friends and I were just about to find out how fast.

The object of the race is to travel to 8 (short course) or 12 (long course) of the 15 pre-determined markers laid out on a map.  Starting from the Palo Verde Park just south of Broadway, we were handed a map at our designated starting time.  The map showed streets, alleys, washes but no street names or other identifications.  Laid out on the map were the 15 markers, with 15 corresponding questions for each. The idea is to get to a marker as quickly as possible, answer the question and move on to the next marker (hopefully in a logical, well-thought out manner. Yeah, right).

The first thing I learned is that running and a reading a map is one of the hardest things to do.  Thank goodness I wasn’t chewing gum.  I quickly identified the first few items and was confident things were going my way until I got stuck.  Marker # 2: “Utility pole # at wash junction?” threw us for a loop (my friend and fellow Soggy Wogger, Steve Outridge was at this marker too).  There were four poles at this junction, but none matched.  Here is where I realized that orienteers are good – they are required to find pinpoint markers with just a map and old fashioned compass.  We literally had to get in the wash to see the pole.  Steve attempted to follow me to the next few markers, but I ditched him through the wash and on to the next marker.

I’ve selected the short course, 8 markers, and quickly get through the next 5 – 6 markers.  I’m on a roll.  Cactus on the wrought iron door?  Saguaro – Check.  Yellow sign on street corner? Speed Humps – check. Each marker, although sometimes small or intricate was easy to locate once you learned to read the map.  I finally come to my last marker – “What are the blue things”? I’m racking my brain looking for something small in the junction of two back alleys.  I run up and down the alleys, fearing that time is ticking away, frantically looking for something blue.  Finally it dawns on me that I’m surrounded by ‘blue things’ – about 150 blue recycling bins. Duh.

Recycling Bins are blue. It took Running Man, Tim Bentley a few minutes to figure this out.

My map is a crumpled sweaty mess as I’m blazing down a back alley towards the finish. I have no idea where my fellow competitors are, as I’ve only seen two out on the ‘course’.  I cross the line in 29:00 and later map it out to be a little over three miles – 9:40 per mile, with stops, turns, backtracks and a few zigzags.  The top orienteer that day is Mark Everett, he was an overachiever and went to all 15 (of the 12 required for the long course) markers in 33:54, and I figure that to be just under 6:00 per mile pace.  Times like that would place Mark in the upper tier of many of the local road races.  That is fast, people, and not only was he reading a map and answering questions at that pace, he was probably chewing gum too…

Our friend Cristina Luis organized the event.  She recently qualified for the United States National Orienteering team and travels to Hungary in August to take on the best teams in the world.  Read a great article about her here, and support the Orienteering Club here.