Pointing the way

You've gotta think on your feet to be good at orienteering.

And not just thinking and walking. Thinking while dodging branches, skirting ditches, hopping over fallen logs and running down leaf-covered slopes to reach a nylon orange-and-white marker hidden somewhere in the woods.

"They call it cunning running," says Peter Friddle, 33, of Lake Zurich, who was panting and dripping in sweat as he completed a 2.1-kilometer course through Linne Woods in Morton Grove, reaching 11 different points on the map in 17 minutes and 48 seconds.

It's a far cry from learning where north was on a compass when you were in Girl Scouts.

In orienteering, you meet up with other racers at a wooded location. Then you get a topographical map of the area, which is covered in small green and brown symbols indicating things such as hills, depressions, places were there are thick brambles, roots that are sticking up out of the ground, clearings and man-made objects.

Certain spots on the map are numbered, and you have to run from one point to the next and see how quickly you can make it to each location and back to the beginning.

The compass is really only used to get you started. You use it to line your map up so that north on the map matches north in real life. Once you know which way you're situated, you just start running.

"Reading the map is just looking for things you know you can identify," Friddle explains. "What we look for as we're running is attack points."

Gabriella Toth, 26, of Skokie, who was also at the recent orienteering event in Morton Grove, says reading a topographical map, as opposed to a road map, takes some getting used to.

"When you start going around in the woods and you get disoriented, it gets harder," she says.

In many ways, the sport mimics what ancient explorers had to do -- use their wits to navigate unknown territory -- but with a few modern touches. Racers have computer sensors they wear on their fingers, and at each marker (called a control) they reach on the course, the sensor records their time. When they get back to the beginning, they plug their sensors into a machine, and their final time gets logged into the computer.

The sport's especially popular in Scandinavian countries such as Finland and Norway, where more than 6,000 people will show up for a race.

Marciel Olaru, 29, of Arlington Heights, grew up in Romania and has been doing orienteering since he was 8 years old. In 1996, Olaru was the junior world champion in orienteering, and he continues to compete on an international level. Olaru says he likes the challenge of combining athletic endurance with figuring out where you are and where you're headed as you run.

"It's more interesting than cross-country or some other sport," he says.

In the United States, orienteering has been gaining a lot of converts recently as adventure racing -- which requires you to be able to mountain bike, canoe and run long, uncharted distances -- has taken off. Toth and her husband, Michael Lester, 25, started orienteering about a year ago to train for hard-core adventure races.

At the Morton Grove event, they completed a course on their bikes to practice maneuvering on wheels while reading a map at the same time.

"You get to exercise at the same time as you use your brain," Toth says. "There's a lot of navigation as well as having fun and being outside in the forest."

Friddle says the key to orienteering is, well, the key. On the map, that is. He says if you know, for example, that a yellow-and-white checkered area on the map means a clearing, then you can look for a clearing when you're running, and you'll be able to get a mental picture of where you are and how much farther you need to go to reach your target.

You also can't be afraid of attacking the brush. Friddle wears gaiters, which are protective shin covers made out of polyester, as well as long sleeves and long pants, even in the sticky summer humidity, to protect himself from scratches.

And you've gotta have that drive to finish, no matter what.

"What I like about it is the accomplishment," says Michael Collins, a member of the Chicago Area Orienteering Club. "Even when I'm tired, when I get lost, I like to finish."

The Chicago Area Orienteering Club organizes meets throughout the spring, summer and fall in forest preserves throughout the Chicago suburbs (members say the spring and fall are better for orienteering because there's less vegetation to hide the markers). Everyone is welcome to attend; often 200 people or more will show up to the events to race through the woods.

You might think that with so many people in the woods at one time, it'd be easy to just follow another person to see where they're headed. But racers say that can be dangerous, because you never know if they're following the same course you are, or if they're completely lost.

Racers also say it's considered bad etiquette to spend time analyzing the map ahead of time. Part of the point of the sport is to be able to read the map while you're on the move.

Not everyone is out to get the fastest time; some take a leisurely walk through the woods and are just happy to locate the markers. But those who do push themselves to win say the sport is a great workout for your mind and your body.

As it says on the club's Web site: "Orienteering is a balance between speed and accuracy, and there's always a fine line, whether you're a beginner or advanced. If you run too fast, you'll wind up overall going a lot slower. The trick is to never run faster than you can navigate. In orienteering, as in life, the race is not always to the swift. Speed helps, but if you're better at navigating, you'll win."