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What Is Orienteering?
Tori Borish • 2024-07-02
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, what is orienteering? You will learn in this episode, the basic concepts of orienteering, types of orienteering competitions, and how to overcome orienteering challenges. Our guest is a regular member of the US National Orienteering Team. Participating in the World Cup and North American Orienteering Championships has secured first place in the sprint event at the 2018 Canadian Orienteering Championships and second place in the sprint event at the 2014 North American Orienteering Championships. I introduced you Tori Borish. I am hastily searching on Google on the best ways to learn basic land navigation skills. I'm looking left and right. I can't really find anything. I'm trying to look for something that's preferably not in like a classroom setting or that sort. I kind of wanted something more hands on. When I stumble upon, someone in Reddit brings up orienteering. I jump on this kind of whole idea. I find a local orienteering club. Next thing you know, I bring this up to my brother and him and I are at, I think Cedar Nalls Park doing some kind of course. And so this was kind of a way for us again to kind of get some insight in the basic land navigation being that we had minimal, if no experience outside of using Apple Maps or Google Maps. So that's my experience kind of with orienteering, just recently stumbling upon it and then kind of indulging and getting some experience. But I'm no expert beyond novice. So the real question is, Tori, how did you get into the world of orienteering?
Tori Borish:Yeah, so I got into orienteering through one of my really good friends from middle and high school. And she got into it through her parents, which if I'm remembering this correctly, they had done some orienteering during college, stopped for a while, then they moved to near Seattle, saw an ad in the newspaper and decided that that would be a cool thing to do as a family. So their family started going to some of the local meets. And then my friend Holly got me and eventually we got kind of most of our other friends involved as well. So, you know, a friend asked me to come do this cool, or some navigation thing. I tried it out, I pretty quickly got hooked. And so I grew up in Seattle, which is where I did this. And one interesting thing is that Seattle is probably the place in the country with the largest school league. So as an elementary, middle or high school student, you could go to the eight meets every winter and compete against other students. So it was also just a way to do an activity with my friends, meet some other students my age around the city and the community I think is also what helped draw me into the sport as well.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, so you get your friend hooking you up there. And also, I'm now realizing how different our experiences are on the basis that they're, it sounds like a more kind of formalized support of orienteering where you grew up.
Tori Borish:Yeah, so this depends a lot on location. For example, if you're over in Europe, especially Scandinavia, like most people have actually heard of orienteering and know that it exists, which is very different than in the US. I lived in Vienna for a little over a year and there were five different orienteering clubs in the city, I think. Maybe I'm wrong about the number, but there were multiple options that I could have picked from. Whereas like right now, I'm a member of the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club. I'm living in Boulder and this encompasses all of Colorado. So there are different places either have clubs, have a lot of clubs, don't have any clubs. And then even within those clubs, some are bigger, have more organized events, some target school students, some don't. So yeah, there is a huge variation. And I guess I was just really lucky that I ended up growing up in a place that did have very well organized meets.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm sure there's half the audience here that's going, yeah, duh, we had one at my middle school or something. And then the other half are maybe like, yeah, this is the first time I'm hearing of this. So it's interesting to hear, and I'm sure we may get in to kind of bring up the European kind of being more involved with this kind of activity, but we've been talking about it. We've name dropped it several times already, Tori, but can you elaborate on what is the basic concept of orienteering?
Tori Borish:Yeah, so I should first just say that people use, at least in the US, the word orienteering in a variety of different ways. So I am talking about it kind of as a competitive or not competitive sport, but just know sometimes this word can be used in slightly different contexts all related to navigation. But so the basic idea is that you have a very detailed map and a compass and that's it. So no GPS, no phone, anything like that. And there are a lot of variations that I think we'll get into later, but usually you have a start point and you have an end point and maybe 10 to 20 different points you have to get to between them. But how you get between them is entirely up to you. So you get to pick your routes and navigate between all these points and get back to the finish as fast as possible. Although, as I said, I do it as a competitive sport. Many people don't care about that and just want to get outside, be in a pretty place, have fun navigating between points. So that's one thing that I really like about orienteering. Sorry, maybe going in a slightly different direction, but there's a lot of variation in both the types of formats, different terrain types. People of kind of all ages and abilities are able to participate. So I think the youngest course is for kids 10 and under. So often eight to 10 year olds might be around the first age. Kids navigate on their own, and then there are people in their 80s or 90s who are going out on courses as well. So the basic part is this navigation, but there's just a lot of other possible variation as well.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. I mean, that's certainly a huge juxtaposition, right? You bring up kind of the age group aspects. Can you talk about some of the variations of say the course for these different levels?
Tori Borish:So they're definitely are, each event usually has a variety of different courses of different varying difficulty. So they do have easier ones that are both easier physically. So shorter distances, less difficult terrain you have to go over, maybe not super steep and easier to navigate. So maybe you'll start mostly on trails or just getting a tiny bit off the trails. Whereas when you get to the harder ones, they're much longer, much more difficult physically and a lot more difficult navigationally as well. Some of them, there could be very few sections where you're even close to a trail. So that is kind of one aspect, but then they're also a variety of different formats of orienteering as well. So I don't know if you want me to get into that now or-
Dylan Carnahan:Go for it. What formats do we got for us?
Tori Borish:So I think the most common are what we call a sprint, middle and long. So I know maybe you're used to sprints as being like super fast, a minute or less around a track or something. In orienteering, this actually refers to races with a winning time of between 12 and 15 minutes. So maybe a little bit closer to getting towards like a 5K, but this format focuses on fast decision making. So in the US, these are actually often on university campuses, whereas in Europe, they're often in like old city centers. So they can be kind of more maze like. And if you were just walking really slowly, the navigation might be pretty simple, but when you're going as fast as you can for 15 minutes, the navigation gets a lot trickier. And I think this is why university campuses and old city centers tend to be good because they often have like interesting buildings, sometimes multi-level, cool areas that make navigation more difficult. So that's probably a bit different than what you experienced, which I would guess might be more like a middle or long. So what we call forest orienteering. And I think this is more traditional, I guess. I think sprints have become more popular, especially in the past decade or so. And so middle has a winning time of around 35 minutes-ish. These are all based on winning time instead of distance, just because you're in very different terrain. So it's really hard, you know, five kilometers, flat, easy to run, open is very different than five kilometers, super steep, really dense vegetation. And then middles are geared towards very precise navigation. So they often have a lot of controls and you just have to read pretty detailed sections of the map to get between them. And then there are also longs with winning times of say 75 to 90 minutes. And these, the goal is often kind of route choice. So they tend to have longer legs on the more elite courses. They could be like one to two, or maybe even three kilometers long, where you have to just pick the best route and people will take a variety of different options, sometimes going pretty far out of the way. And then they also have sprint relays and forest relays. And then there are a lot of other options too. There are some 24 hour events that are strangely called row games. There's cross country ski orienteering. Some people do like canoe orienteering. There's a variety of other formats as well, but I think those are the most common.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that is a lot. There's a lot to this. I wanna go back to kind of a distinction between the sprint and say the middle and long. It sounded like the sprint is more just urban.
Tori Borish:Yeah, there are forest sprints. My personal preference is that I tend to not like them as much because I think what I really like about the urban sprints is it's very much about super fast decisions, whereas when you get towards the forest sprints, it's kind of like you're doing a middle or long, it's just a little bit shorter. And it's just a very different kind of navigation and like way you need to engage your brain. So one of the things about sprints is it's really fascinating. You really kind of are putting your body at the limits of running as fast as you can, but you still need to be able to think carefully because I bet all other orienteers and I have also had this experience where you can outrun your navigation. I mean, you can do this in all the formats, but it can definitely easily happen in sprints where you just do something really stupid. Like you count buildings wrong and go in the wrong place. Whereas, I think just because kind of lack of oxygen in the brain or you're so focused on something else. So to me, it's just a different kind of challenge than the others and fun in very different ways.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a... I mean, again, you are navigating while physically straining yourself. So yeah, that's gonna... And you're also, there's a time aspect, which I'm sure induces some stress. So I think the culmination of all of that, it's understandable that there might... There's gonna be some difficulty there. Just to contextualize this a little bit further, for people, so you brought up kind of route, right? And so can you elaborate on that, what you're trying to do on that route? And are there certain markers or things of that nature that you're trying to reach?
Tori Borish:Yeah, this is a good point that I forgot to bring up earlier. As I said, you're going to say 10 or 20 different points along the way. And at each of these, there is an orange and white flag and then a little electronic box. Where you often carry a little electronic chip on your finger that you can put in the box to just mark that you are there and then you can get split times between them. But that is all that there is out there. So there is, I guess, aside from sometimes little kid courses, there really are no other markings out on the course. So it's entirely up to you how you get between the two points. And this I think is what's really interesting. And especially as you're starting out, you need to know yourself, as well as look at the map and figure out which route makes the most sense for you. When I was starting out, I wasn't very good at navigating. So if I really wanted to be fast, if there was a roundabout route where I could be on trails most of the time and super easy navigation, that was usually the best option. I know someone gave me a rule of thumb, like if it's twice as long or less, it'll be worth it. Obviously that's changed a lot as I've gotten better at navigating. But some people are good at going through certain kinds of vegetation. There's certain kinds of features that are easier for me to navigate with. So it really, there are some personal choices here as well. So you kind of need to understand the terrain and how quickly you move in different kinds of terrain along the different possible routes. And then you pick whichever one you think will be best for you at that moment.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. No, and I'm sure you kind of get that exposure through going to these various events, right? Like you said, you bring up kind of your preferences on the sprint, kind of what terrain that you prefer. Can you talk about, now that obviously there's some kind of strategy, right, and calibration of how you are, right, and your preferences, but how have your land navigation skills progressed over time, right? It's one thing to go, hey, I'm really good at running on this terrain. It's another thing to actually get to a set destination.
Tori Borish:Well, they've definitely gotten better over time. I think this is a combination of a variety of things, reading a map, kind of judging terrain, because you really need to match the terrain with the map to be able to navigate between them. I've also gotten a lot faster at, when I get lost, finding myself again. And I should say, when I use the term getting lost, I like generally know I'm in like some portion of the map. It'd be easy for me to get back. I just don't know exactly where I am on the map. I guess if you want a little story, one of my first national meets, so this was freshman year of high school right after my friend had wrote me in. I was in Texas and I was looking for some control and I couldn't find it because I wasn't very good at navigating at that point. And I probably went on a course that was too difficult for me. But anyway, it was fun, I enjoyed it. And I was like, okay, I'm lost, what do I do? So I was like, well, one of the options is you can bail to some big feature. So I looked at the map and there was a huge lake to probably the east or pick some direction. So I went several hundred meters out of the way, hit the lake. Then I suddenly realized that I had no idea where along the edge of the lake I actually was because it all looked the same. So then I went back past around where the control was and had to hit a road like the same distance to the other side when I was finally able to find like a bend in the road that was very distinctive to know where I was and then came back. So that was something I like had some general ideas of strategies like, oh, find some big feature, go to that. But I haven't quite thought through the details of, oh, you need to know like where exactly you are. You need a very distinguishable feature. So that was a time I spent half an hour an hour just wandering around being confused. Now I would spend less than that. I mean, I still get lost sometimes, but for much shorter periods of time. And I think I'd usually be able to find myself on kind of some of the smaller features along the way if I did lose map contact, as opposed to needing to go that far out of the way.
Dylan Carnahan:That's interesting. I mean, that's a great simple tip, right? Look for something recognizable and go to that. You mentioned how you've been able to identify smaller features. How do you do that?
Tori Borish:I think a lot of it is just practice. Yeah, so any recognizable feature going up to the top of hills, boulders, like anywhere you can see out, just if you're able to look over a larger area, there's more you can try to line up with on the map, because sometimes they're what we call parallel features, where there's two places that look really similar that are pretty close together, and it's easy to mistake one for the other. So the more features you can kind of put together, you can eliminate one of those spots and realize, oh, you probably are at the other. I think there's some general tips like that. Aside from that, I think it's really just practice, getting good at map reading, understanding the terrain, I think just getting out, orienteering on maps as much as possible. I know that's harder living some places, but I think that really just helps. One thing I've found is that, although my overall navigation skills have definitely, well, I don't know, continuously improved, but slowly gotten a lot better, that I think my base level is much higher than it was when I started. I also still have small ups and downs to navigation skills just based on if I'm going to a lot of meets in a given season or not. I get slower at map reading, as well as just make mistakes more quickly if I haven't been out orienteering for a while. So I think there's also kind of small fluctuations too.
Dylan Carnahan:Sounds like it's a, like many things, it's a perishable skill set, right?
Tori Borish:Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's just like learning anything else.
Dylan Carnahan:I'm curious, something that we haven't mentioned a whole lot of, what are some kind of, what's some equipment or what accoutrements do you have when you go on these competitions?
Tori Borish:So the main thing is a compass. So you get the map at the start, so you can't see the route ahead of time. But so you need a compass. Most orienteers have thumb compasses, so they attach to your thumb. And the nice thing is then you can hold it with the map. And this is a way to kind of help keep yourself oriented is I pretty much always have my map nicely folded. So like in front of me is in front of me and oriented so north is north. And then it's just kind of easier to navigate quickly when you're doing that. My thumb compass also has a magnifier on it. I have had this for the past decade or so. Got this tip from some other people, even though I have pretty good eyesight. So do recommend if you're, it's actually really good for sprints when they're these small details and you're running fast. It can actually be kind of helpful sometimes to magnify the area and see it larger as you're running. Anyway, that is not necessary, but I find that helpful either for people that don't have as good of eyesight or that just like want to be able to read the map faster. I mean, that's really the main thing that you need. I also have what's called a control description holder. So I didn't mention this, but with your map, you also have what's called control descriptions. So each of the points are called controls and the map tells you exactly where it is. So it's like the northern, the east side of the northernmost boulder. So the idea with orienteering is that there should be no uncertainty in where the control is. You just have to be able to navigate to it. So I have just a holder that I put on my arm that allows me to then see these quickly while running. And they also all have numbers. You can just check that you're at the right spot. The flags are all numbered as well. Generally, it's good to have leg cover if you're running in the woods. So long socks or long pants. I do have, like sometimes you can use regular running shoes or trail running shoes. I do have specific orienteering shoes with metal studs on the bottom. They just have better grip in places where it's pretty wet or rocky. There's certain kinds of terrain they're better for and certain kinds are not necessary. But again, these are kind of all extra. The main thing you just need is a compass and some sort of athletic clothing and shoes.
Dylan Carnahan:So we got our compass. We got, we're looking at our description of where these points are. It's looking a little slippery. All right, we got our shoes with like a little metal cleats for the trail. And how, you know, how does the competition circuit work? How are we, we did a couple club runs. What do we do from there if we're looking to change from say a hobbyist to someone that like yourself that wants to compete?
Tori Borish:So they're, I guess we don't normally use the phrase competition circuit, but I feel like they're kind of various levels of these circuits. Like one, they're often local level meets. So that was like the school league that I had growing up. And I think if there are any local meets, like those are still really good training. And those tend to be more low key. You know, you don't need to register in advance. You can just show up, run. There's always someone giving beginner instructions. So not quite what you're asking, but for newbies coming in. And those are great. And just the way they function, I think, depends a lot on the club that's putting them on. And I guess the next level up in the US would be national meets. And these are ones, there is a US Orienteering, or Orienteering USA is kind of the national federation. And they sanction these often weekend meets that different clubs host around the country. And these, you can get national ranking points for they have kind of a rolling system. So you can compete with other people within your age range. And these often have slightly stricter start time or start windows. You're normally assigned to start time ahead of time that are randomized just so you don't run into other people on the course too frequently. I mean, you're probably going to, because people go at very different speeds. So that's a really good way to get in some high quality racing. I guess, as I said, if you have the money and time to do so, I ended up going to a variety of meets over in Europe as well, like in the summers as a junior. There are some orienteering festivals. I guess there's some, now there are occasionally, there's some in the US and Canada as well, but there are a lot more over in Europe. And as you can imagine with orienteering, where it's very terrain dependent, it's helpful to get experience with a variety of different kinds of terrain. So it is nice to be able to go to different parts of the country or parts of the world. Obviously, that does take time and money, so not always easy to do so. And then there, again, they have different kinds of local and regional meets. There are also some international ones. So I have run at the World Orienteering Championship a few times. The US sends a team every year. We also send one to the Junior World Championships and the World University Orienteering Championships. These are usually during the summer, which makes travel a little bit easier, especially for the students. There is, let's think at the very elite level. So all national team members are able to run in the World Cups. So there are, I think, four on average a year, sometimes in addition to the World Champs, but sometimes travel just gets expensive and hard to take vacation days. So I think some of our European based, but still American athletes tend to go to those more. But I have gone to one non World Champs World Cup, which was a lot of fun, because it's still, those are like very high level, you have to qualify through your national federation. They have specific start orders that are randomized and everything. You're in these quarantines, so you're not allowed to leave in case the map leaks. Yeah, there's a lot of requirements, but anyway. So I don't think that's not probably what the average person would be doing, but it is a competitive sport at the high level.
Dylan Carnahan:That there was, you just gave a lot of very, very good information that kind of contextualized the scale and kind of the levels to orienteering. You know, I don't want to dive too much on the technical distinctions between these various different levels of competition, but I think for you, Tori, I mean, when, when you're competing at a caliber, at a high caliber, right? Where it's getting to the point where there's a quarantine in place to ensure that there's no asymmetry amongst competitors regarding the map that way that you can't perform better than others. What drove you to go to that, go to that height, right? You know, you start out, your friend brings it up, you're going to go into local and the national events, and then you're there at that level. I mean, what made you want to get involved at that height?
Tori Borish:I think some of it was just, there was the opportunity to do so. I really liked orienteering on its own, so I did more of it. I kind of built up a network of friends at the national level. So I think a lot of American orienteers that go to a lot of the national meets, we do fly somewhere for the weekend, but then you meet up with all these friends from all over the country. And it's a lot of fun. I've enjoyed traveling as well. So it's actually, this friend qualified for the Junior Rural Team before I did, and it sounded like a super cool experience. And I was like, oh, maybe I could do that too. And I'd been doing pretty well locally. So I went to some, I made sure to go to enough national meets to qualify for that. And so my first, well, I guess not my first international meet, but the first kind of international competitive meet was the Junior Rural Champs in 2008 in Sweden. And it was just such an amazing experience to be able to like represent my country at a sporting event, which I never really thought I would. I had done a lot of sports growing up, but I guess I've still always prioritized school and work, and I do orienteering seriously, but it is still a hobby. But just because of, probably because there are fewer people that do it, people who do prioritize school and other jobs are still able to compete at that level, or at least go to those competitions. I never placed particularly well, but I think it was just, it was available. It sounded like a fun opportunity, and it was a pretty amazing opportunity to compete with some of the top orienteers in the world, and also just get to hang out with them around races, especially at the Junior World Champs. We were all staying, I think this was some military base, but we were all staying there in dorms. I got to play games with people from other countries, and it was just a really cool experience.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different things there, right? There's the social aspect, there's just the experiential, traveling somewhere, right? Somewhere new, potentially. And then something, you know, as a, I can relate having played baseball in college, but one of the things that you mentioned there that I can't relate to is that the kind of the nationalism aspect of representing the United States. When I played, it wasn't, I'm not representing, I'm representing my school against another school, right? So that's another added aspect. So it makes sense to be really passionate when you have a lot of those positive reinforcements.
Tori Borish:Yeah. And I mean, also just like I, I don't know if I'd consider myself a competitive person, but I think I am very much in some ways and not in other ways, but you know, there's a chance to like do better and orienteering is a super fun, but also a little bit frustrating sport because, you know, there's always room for improvement. So it was also something that I was just really excited to keep trying to get better at too.
Dylan Carnahan:So I'm going to hone in on the get better part. So what I'm sure there are, you shared one moment earlier, kind of in earlier in this interview and earlier in your career, but what's the largest challenge you faced during these competitions?
Tori Borish:I think this depends a little bit on the type of competition. As I said, with the like sprint middle and long, I feel like they're all designed to have different kinds of challenges. Like with the sprint, it really is, how are you reading a map and making decisions when you're running as fast as you can? And that's something like reading a map while running. I do sometimes train like some on some of my training runs, I'll just bring maps from random places and pick routes. Because just like anything else, it's a learnable skill. I guess then in the forest or like in the middles, especially navigation is just difficult. Some maps have very few details, and then you're like, okay, what am I doing? I guess I'm taking a bearing and pace counting and hoping that I'm going to find it. Other ones have a ridiculous amount of detail and it's really easy to think you're at the right boulder, but end up on a boulder pretty close, but slightly different. So both really detailed and not detailed maps pose different kinds of challenges, but just being able to navigate cleanly, sometimes simplifying the map so that you don't try to pick out every single boulder in a boulder field because obviously that's not going to help you find it quickly. So that's one type of challenge. And then I guess for long, sometimes you also just get, again, physical challenges. You know, you're really tired and sometimes you have this couple kilometer long leg and you're running and there's nobody else around. And there's like a wall of dense vegetation in front of you when you have to keep pushing through it. So sometimes just like motivating yourself to go through marshes or blackberry bushes or whatever unpleasant vegetation you happen to be going through at the moment can also be a challenge. There's also really great vegetation to run through too. So don't, I don't want to scare anybody off.
Dylan Carnahan:I want to narrow in on that part because I never thought about that is that say you've plotted this course and then you're under a time constraint. And then you see like some non inviting vegetation or something. I'm sure that that's startling. And so it sounds like you often approach that by just emboldening yourself and then going through.
Tori Borish:So ideally this should be on the map. Like as I said, these are much more detailed than other maps. So like the color they put for vegetation is defined by like the average speed you'll go going through there. So like a hundred percent, 80%, 50%. So theoretically you should kind of know, but you know, there's a mapping can be kind of subjective and you know, sometimes you're in a slightly different area than you are, or you know, it's impossible to map like every tiny little thing. So there have been times when I've come across something and I'm like, oh, this water is way deeper than I wanted. I really don't think I can safely do that. So then I'll pick another route. If it's just like, oh, this is going to be really annoying. I will sometimes just talk to myself and be like, it's okay, Tori, go through it. You can do this for the 100 meters of whatever section it is. I personally get more motivated if there's somebody else around me that can really help be like, they're going through, you need to go through too. Sometimes that happens, sometimes that doesn't, that's not really under your control. So I think it just really depends. You pick a route, keeping this in mind. So you often try to go around what looks like really marshy areas, although some places the marshes can be drier and can actually be good running. So again, you really need to know kind of the terrain. But right, so in some places, maybe you avoid those. You always try to avoid the densest vegetations, but sometimes you don't really have an option and you just have to go through it.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, I think one of the things that you mentioned it just now and you'd mentioned it previously were how other people being on the course. So I know you had talked about some potentially like staggering when people start or something to that effect. How does that impact you in a race seeing what other people are doing? Is that, it can be psychologically helpful, right? If they're doing something that you're about to have to do. Can you elaborate a little bit about that?
Tori Borish:Yeah, I guess there's a lot here. I should also say, as I mentioned at the start, there are a couple of relays. So there are some mass start events. Sometimes they have different forkings or something so that you don't know exactly where other people are going. But in general, it is a staggered start. I have definitely had other people help me a lot and hurt me a lot. I think everybody as they're starting out might have the experience where they don't know what they're doing and they see somebody going and they follow them. And then suddenly either that person didn't know what they were doing or that person gets ahead of you and then you're lost. And then you're like, I have no clue where I am because I wasn't reading the map. So that could be very problematic. I do find it very motivating. I think some of my, I've had plenty of fast individual runs, but I have also had some pretty fast relays where you, I think learning, if you get to the elite level, like learning how to use other people but not depend on them is a skill and is something I think I'm still working on. Because if you see somebody heading into the control, that can help you and help you speed up a little bit as well as just motivate you to keep up with them. But at the same time, if you actually had a different control and you think they're going to yours, then they punch and run off and you're very confused. So I think it's still always important to make sure that you keep map contact. So you should know where you are at all times, but also try to get some of the benefits of running with other people and finding the right balance can be really tricky.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's a whole dimension of this orienteering, is like gleaning information off of what other people are doing on the course and then contextualizing that to see if that can be beneficial. Because as you mentioned, say even if you're maintaining map contact or whatever, and you kind of maybe get too caught up in what they're doing, that that could potentially hinder your run, right?
Tori Borish:Yeah, usually anytime I change my plan mid route, sometimes because of a person or something else, it's usually not a good ending. So I think in general, I would suggest when people are starting out, try to just ignore everyone. I think one of my first orienteering mentors said, treat everybody as like flora and fauna. So pretend that they're not there, but especially if you get into relays and now there's this new sprint format called the Knockout Sprint, where you start like five people at the same time, sometimes on identical courses. Like there are some new formats that people can play around with where it does, it's worth at least paying attention to what other people are doing, but still making sure that you have your own plan and execute that and know where you are.
Dylan Carnahan:Well said. Wow, there's just, you've given a lot of great information, whether it be just overarching concepts or just fine details like magnifying your compass or your map. What advice do you have for novice orienteers or just people hearing this podcast are going, hey, maybe this is something to look into?
Tori Borish:I think if it's something you're curious about, just look up online, see if there's some local orienteering meet, go to a race, try it out. I really think just getting out on maps as much as possible. Unfortunately, at least at the start, as you're learning how to navigate, like you need probably someone else to have created the map, and these are pretty detailed, so it can be challenging, but really just go to as many events as you can. Don't be too concerned about getting lost. Like that's how you learn, right? If you make a mistake, you have to learn how to get un-lost, and then maybe you'll avoid that in the future. Maybe you'll make similar ones for a while. I still make mistakes while out there orienteering. It's part of the fun of it. Obviously, do this in a safe way. A lot of times, you'll have a safety bearing. Like if you head west, you will hit this big road that will get you back to the parking lot. There are plenty of ways to make sure this is done safely, but I think just not being worried, trying it out. Start with an easier course, but if you're feeling ready, keep trying. A lot of the local meets will let you do a second course either for free or pretty cheaply afterward, especially if it's your first time. If you happen to know somebody who's a little bit better at navigating than you, you could have them say shadow you on a course just to give you a little bit of feedback on maybe what they're seeing or if there's something that you're missing. I feel like I haven't done that as much as I should, but every time I've done that, it's been really useful. But yeah, mostly just get out there on maps and do it.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you can research, you can indulge in a lot of content about a subject, but the best way to experience something is to experience it, right? So hopefully those words have galvanized someone's confidence in going out here and doing a quick Google search because that is pretty much the barrier to entry, at least on beginning to do something. So I appreciate your words there. What's the best way for people to learn more about you and the work you do?
Tori Borish:So I think if you want to learn more about orienteering in the US, either to learn more about the team or to find local clubs, orienteeringusa.org is the place to go. I think there is an easy way to search for local clubs, and then you can go to that club's website and see if there are any local events. I think there are some resources as well about equipment to have, practice navigating skills, although really I think just going to meets is the best. If you're curious about kind of that competitive aspect, the US Orienteering Team has a team blog. I think the juniors are the best at updating it right now, but that is usorienteeringteam.wordpress.com, I think, slash blog. So I think those are a couple of websites, but really just go to a meet and talk to people there. As I said, a lot of the local meets have a volunteer there for a beginner instruction who's happy to, oh, sorry, well, this wasn't about me, but anyway, happy to share more about the sport in general. And then you'll get to talk to people and learn more about what orienteering is like locally.
Dylan Carnahan:No, that's all great information. And I'll be sure to include those links as well as some other things that you've mentioned in the show notes for those that are listening. Tori, thank you for coming on today and sharing your knowledge and time. I really appreciated it.
Tori Borish:Thanks a lot.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Tori. We talked about the Orienteering competition circuit, multi-day events, and the progression of land navigation skills over time. Go to this episode's show notes to see any resources Tori mentioned during our episode. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.