The Orienteering WOD Intelligence Isn’T One of the 10 Components of Fitness, but You’Ll Need Your Brain to Finish Cameron Sinclair’S New York City Orienteering WOD

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The Orienteering WOD Intelligence isn’t one of the 10 components of fitness, but you’ll need your brain to finish Cameron Sinclair’s New York City orienteering WOD.

By Cameron Sinclair September 2011 All images: Asta Fivgas

The sport of orienteering originated in Sweden as a form of military training. It has since spread to most corners of the world but remains an obscure pursuit, a challenging mix of intellect and fitness.

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In New Zealand, where I grew up, orienteering was a at a control station is recorded with a unique perforation fundamental part of the high-school outdoor-education pattern. The time it takes to cover the course is recorded, curriculum, incorporating map and compass skills and presenting the punch card to judges confirms with a half-day off class to run around the hills behind arrival at each station. Errors result in a time penalty or my hometown. disqualification. The distance of a course is measured as the crow flies, though the actual distances covered are With a map, a bit of scouting and some resourcefulness, inevitably much greater. Courses are usually run by affiliates can create an imaginative “O-WOD” to test individuals or pairs or in team relays. judgment as much as physical capacity. Unlike a classic CrossFit WOD with a running component or the current Ideally, the entire course should continually present the trend in longer form military-influenced obstacle courses athlete with route choices between markers that are (Spartan run, Tough Mudder), successful navigation is an obstructed by insurmountable or at least highly challenging essential factor in completing an orienteering course. obstacles, such as buildings, cliff faces or bodies of water. This option forces runners to continuously choose and Trust Me, I Know a Shortcut … revise their route and should ensure constant variation Classic O courses navigate over concealed or rugged in the overall distances athletes cover. When presenting terrain using a map and compass to locate and identify CrossFitters with a choice of going over or around an route markers called “control stations.” Orienteers also carry obstacle, it’s best stay away from public buildings, botanical a punch card (about the size of a bus ticket), and arrival gardens or protected heritage sites.

In a CrossFit orienteering WOD, arrival at a control station comes with a bit of work.

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Classic O courses navigate over concealed or rugged terrain using a map and compass to locate and identify route markers called “control stations.”

A CrossFit orienteering course would retain the map but replace perforation cards with a series of suitably arduous physical tasks. Take the gym equipment outside. Basic body-weight movements can be performed anywhere, utilizing fences, playground equipment, park benches, scaffolding, trees, rocks and whatever else you have at your disposal. A course doesn’t need to be long to test an athlete’s judgment or physical capacity. To increase workload over short distances, add a weight vest, backpack, kettlebells or sandbags to the run. My college rugby team once lugged a pair of 60-lb. rubber dumbbells around a hilly circuit above the city of Wellington, taking turns to “farmer jog” until our arms gave up and we could pass them to a teammate. Start with a short “sprint” course with tasks performed along a route easily completed in less than 20 minutes, perhaps staying within a mile of your affiliate or starting point. All courses require elements of route choice and discovery. Mark control stations with uniform markers Arrive at the Obelisk, do 50 push-ups, and move such as road cones, colored flags or party balloons with on to the next control station. task instructions attached or hidden underneath. A course does not even require a map. The treasure hunt Classic orienteering courses use terrain features such as is another variation borrowed by the television show The riverbeds, rocky outcrops, culverts or the cover of forest Amazing Race, where a clue or information leading to the to conceal the location of control stations, sometimes next task is only revealed upon completion of the task at resulting in athletes overlooking or navigating past a hand. The location, task, clue or instruction can be put in control station that is only a few meters away. Urban affil- an envelope for unsupervised collection or provided as a iates could set their tasks on building roofs, in stairwells, verbal instruction by a coach or judge. WOD tasks can be under underpasses, or hidden behind fences, gates, cars, placed in letterboxes or under cones, or posted on trees or bar stools—with safety of the athletes always first in and lampposts. Directional clues can be cryptic, poetic or mind. prosaic. Some orienteering clubs run treasure-hunt-style Another option is to provide a map of the course including courses using text messages to provide upcoming clues. a simple list of tasks to perform but only revealing the rep count upon arrival at the control station.

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Strict movement standards, of course, apply Sometimes you have to get a little creative throughout the O-WOD. in an orienteering WOD.

Courses can be completed on a bike or on water. Our senior high-school water-safety program was cleverly One of my favorite presented as an orienteering course, with kayaking, swim variations is night legs and dinghy sailing between safety lectures around orienteering, usually the bays and inlets of New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds. A particularly challenging variation is score orienteering, scheduled close to a full where an athlete must visit as many control stations as moon and navigated with possible within a set time limit. The further away the a headlamp or torch. control station, the greater the difficulty of task completion and the more points an athlete is awarded for a visit. Points are also deducted for failing to return within the allocated time (usually X points per minute). This style of One of my favorite variations is night orienteering, usually orienteering in its longer form is called “rogaining,” where scheduled close to a full moon and navigated with a time domains can vary from two to 24 hours. The same headlamp or torch. Due to the obvious difficulty imposed map and markers can be used to set courses with time by limited visibility, courses can be set in open spaces priority, score priority or full task completion. Because of or over relatively short distances, with the noise of your the wide range of options, it is an excellent choice for a competitors (the clink of barbells, the grunts of burpees) scalable CrossFit O-WOD. coming through the darkness and adding to the urgency of completion.

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Google Maps are good for smaller circuits encompassing a few city blocks with high task priority. More detail is needed to set longer courses (or you need to live in an area covered by high-resolution satellite images). National survey maps in both the U.S. and the pre-metric Commonwealth were often made to a scale of 1:63,360 (1 inch to 1 mile) and other ratios too sparse for practical use on short courses, but this is easily adapted by enlargement on a photocopier. Shopping maps, ski-field run drawings, tourist maps, campus maps, pages copied from a street atlas or even hand-drawn maps are just as effective. Specialized orienteering maps are more detailed than standard topographical maps, with greater information on terrain features that would normally not be identified, such as knolls, gullies, culverts, lone trees and rocks. They are typically a metric scale of 1:10,000 (1 centimeter to 100 meters) or 1:15,000, though there are many variations. Local orienteering clubs often sell these detailed maps to the public. Listings of clubs affiliated to the International Orienteering Federation (and thus likely to have high- quality local maps) can be found here: http://www.orien- A map? Yes, it’s a good idea. teering.org/index.php/iof2006/IOF/Member-Federations. A list of U.S. clubs is here: http://orienteeringusa.org/ club-leaders/club-directory. While it should go without saying, always check the circuit you have devised for any changes that may have taken place since earlier scouting and reconnaissance, such as the removal of scaffolding, road construction or the introduction of any potential hazards and problems. The unannounced arrival of bulldozers on a forestry site the day before an event back home rendered several trails, knolls and trees obsolete. Central Park O-WOD A time-capped score WOD presents athletes with a classic competition scenario. When scrutinizing route choices, not only do they need to estimate distance, but they also need to identify and avoid obstacles and avoid cumbersome tasks in favor of efficiency and expedience. Further, they must estimate task difficulty, completion time and the inevitable muscle recovery required, all while staying within the allowed time domain. The Central Park O-WOD in New York City starts and finishes with the athlete touching the Maine Monument An outdoor workout can provide a change of scenery and in Columbus Circle, on the corner of West 59th Street and just might attract a few new athletes to your class. Central Park West.

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Athletes have 45 minutes to complete as many physical tasks as possible. Points are awarded according to distance from the starting point. Athletes must touch (or summit) the landmark identified and perform the task nearby as required. Failure to return to the start inside the 45-minute cut-off will result in a deduction of 10 points for every minute thereafter. The maximum possible score is 175. The map and tasks may be revealed for study beforehand, or all information including the time domain can be

presented to an athlete as the clock starts. CrossFit Queens The length of mapped area of Central Park, from 59th Street to 90th Street, is approximately 1.55 miles or 2.5 kilometers, a fast 10-15 minutes depending on pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The width from east to west is 0.52 miles, or 0.82 kilometers, a fairly consistent 4-5 minutes. About the Author To scale within the limited time frame, divide rep counts by Cameron Sinclair was once the secretary of the Marlborough 50 percent. Points remain the same. Orienteering Club and learned to read a map and compass in the forests and parks of New Zealand. He is CrossFit Level There are, of course, other ways to use the map and 1 trainer and coaches rugby and cross-country in New York plotted tasks: while navigating his way between several local affiliates. 1. Maximum score over another time domain, with overtime penalty. 2. Fastest to score 100 points (or X points). 3. Fastest to complete all tasks (or all tasks within a specific zone). Have fun!

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