Orienteering

I just finished doing peer performance reviews for work, so it’s time for some posting.

On Sunday morning, Girts and I went orienteering. I had no idea what that was before Saturday night, but it turned out to be pretty cool. Basically it’s like a running race, but you have to go find places as part of the race, so there’s an element of strategy and navigation. At the starting line, you’re given a map and a compass. The map has numbered locations of markers, and you have to go to each marker and use a tool there to punch a hole in a card that they give you (to prove you were there).

The maps are relatively dense, so it’s not trivial to find the markers, especially in the woods. Here’s a sample map, though that isn’t the same course. The one we went to was at the presidio, near the golden gate bridge.

Since I didn’t really know what I was doing, I went on the white course, which was 3 kilometers long. The distances are as the crow flies, so I’d say I did maybe a bit less than 5km through forests, streets, and fields. I finished in 41 minutes, which was good enough for me, considering I got lost a couple of times. Since most of my competition on the white course was relatively, ahem, casual about the race, I was in second place when I left (the start times are staggered so that you can’t just follow people, so some people hadn’t finished by the time I left).