Summer is winding down and our orienteering season is about to go through its annual transformation. We’re sorry that the last traditional meet was cancelled, but we’ve packed a lot into the season already with eight traditional meets, including one nationally ranked event, and several other great meets. In addition, we’re soon to have the High School Score-O (6 Aug), another relay event (13 Aug), and a Mountain-O (16 Aug). After that the Sprint Series begins.
What’s a “sprint”? In the orienteering world, sprints are shorter events, often in urban areas and parks. The controls are not super dependent on topographic features so they’re usually a bit easier to find. Sprints are all about “route choice”. A good sprint course makes orienteers quickly decide which of two or more routes is the fastest one to the next control. Sprints require quick thinking and frequent re-orientation.
If you’re not inclined to “sprint”, don’t worry. We still offer shorter courses and sometimes the equivalent of “white”, beginner courses. Sprints are a great way to get you thinking about routes and to help you improve your map reading skills, even if you’re not all-out running.
Orienteers who do want to move fast, can participate in our annual pursuit. If you participate in three “long” sprints, your times will be normalized against the fastest recorded times and at the last sprint, to be held on September 24th at UAA, the top qualifying men and women run against each other head-to-head, in a pursuit format – first to the finish wins the whole series! On that last sprint, we’ll try to set up courses that offer opportunities to spectate and at the end of the pursuit, we’ll give annual awards for the whole season and elect our board for the next year at our annual meeting and celebration.