Urban orienteering

I joined some CSU orienteers for a workout last night that was really fun, and different than anything I'd done before. Urban orienteering! I bet there is a "real" name for this somewhere, but that pretty much describes it. The map is of Harvard university, which is pretty good for orienteering because it is so complex. Lori set up a 5km course, (thats straight-line distance), and I headed off into the darkness to see how quickly I could run it. The pinkish-brown is pavement, the dark gray objects are buildings, the hashed-pink area is construction, yellow is grass, green is people's yards (off limits), and white is open forest, generally that means grass with some trees. I had fun trying to pick the best line to get from point to point, it was certainly more like ski-o than foot-o, because you couldn't just take a compass bearing and run through the woods, you had to actually choose which paths and roads to follow because there were large brick buildings in the way of going straight.