Put some direction in your sporting life

True grit and true spirit will be a factor at dozens of athletic games and races scheduled around the area on Saturday, but only one will require every participant to find true north.

To celebrate National Orienteering Day, the Eastern Washington Orienteering Club will be teaching classes for beginners at Mirabeau Point and conducting races that range from little more than a fun scavenger hunt to lung-busting courses that challenge the mind as much as the body.

“Orienteering was invented in Sweden or in Norway, depending on whether you ask a Swede or a Norwegian,” said John Beck, who’s been coordinating local orienteering activities since 1988.

But just as lutefisk, pickled herring and running from the sauna to plunge through a hole in the pond ice have found only peripheral interest in the United States, so it is for this sport’s curious mix of heavy breathing and compass navigation.

Orienteering is a run that requires thought.

Participants play their game down an uncertain path on unfamiliar terrain.

Foot speed is useless without the ability to read a map. This limits the field, even though the handful of local enthusiasts is more than willing to share the basics before any meet.

If past events are an indication, Saturday’s activities for all comers will include a few sinewy specimens in flimsy running shorts, like club president and masters-class standout John Harbuck, to novices who might walk the course in jeans and sandals, maybe with a kid in tow.

Scouting or outdoor groups ought to eat this up.

The race director will give each participant special maps that have much more detail than normal topographic maps. Orienteering maps are enhanced to show even more subtle features in the contour lines as well as other terrain features, such as the degrees of density to the foliage and the ruggedness of rock formations.

A certain number of checkpoints (controls) are marked on each map. It’s up to the runner to decide the fastest route to each control, which is marked by the course-setter with a flag.

The shortest route may not be the fastest if it’s plugged with underbrush.

Orienteering’s biggest international event, the O-Ringen, is held annually in Sweden and attracts 15,000 competitors from around the world.

Last year, more than 600 days of orienteering events were logged in the U.S. by the United States Orienteering Federation.

Spokane events attract a couple of dozen to maybe 50 participants, Beck said.

The sport attracts everyone from educators to repairmen, but most enthusiasts tend to be well-educated outdoor types with an analytical streak, federation officials say.

Beck, one of the local pillars of orienteering, doesn’t look athletic. He’s known to show up in slacks and a knit shirt with a collar, his pale skin looking more like that of an accountant during tax season than an aficionado of a rugged outdoor sport.

At the competitive level, one must have speed, agility, endurance and a sense for reading the subtleties of terrain from the symbols on a sheet of paper.

At the fun level, Beck said, you need only to be game for a chess-like challenge as you move through the landscape.

A compass is the only serious equipment required. The inexpensive protractor compass used by most backpackers works fine.

Serious orienteers use a small compass that attaches to the thumb. The more expensive the compass, the faster the magnetic needle will settle in its liquid case.

The problem-solving element in orienteering ought to be an incentive rather than a deterrent, since it levels the ground between athleticism and intellect as well as between youth and age.

And the sport is supple enough to be molded.

It’s being done on mountain bikes, after dark with headlamps and who knows how many other variations. The international federation is petitioning to have it included as a cross-country skiing event in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Matt Holbert, whom I interviewed a few years ago after he placed second in an orienteering meet at Gonzaga, had his own possible variation that could give him the edge to be a champ.

“Personally, I’d like to see an event that combines orienteering and golf,” he said. “I swing better than I run, but I’ve been in the rough enough to know my way through the woods.”

Contact Rich Landers at 459-5508 or richl@spokesman.com