A map, sneakers, and quick wits

Running through Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Mass., Jennifer Shultis drops a hand to the three-foot-high retaining wall and jumps to a grassy patch below. "Sorry!" she calls over her shoulder to a reporter trying to keep up.

She heads onto a footpath, studying the map in her hands without breaking stride.

"OK, it will be faster if we just go this way," she says, suddenly swinging sharply to the left. Moments later, Shultis, with reporter in tow, thunders up a ramp, throws open a glass door, sprints through an air-conditioned building, and speeds out the other side. Bingo. There is the next objective, called a "control point," marked by an orange-and-white flag.

That's the essence of orienteering – finding your way from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Anyone who's been lost in a new city or tried running for a connecting flight somewhere in another part of an airport has orienteered. But orienteering is also a competitive sport for world-class athletes.

Competing in an urban setting like this is a relatively new approach to a sport that's been around for the past three decades in the United States and usually takes place in the woods, far from city streets and traffic. Its cousin, urban adventure racing, often includes orienteering along with other forms of racing. It's also growing in popularity.

In orienteering, participants are handed a map with lots of lines and symbols, but few labels. The objective is to decipher the map and find the markers, called control points, in as little time as possible. The sport began as a military exercise in Sweden around 1900, but it didn't take hold in the United States until the late 1960s. Today, there are nearly 70 US clubs in about 35 states.

Orienteering has always been considered an aerobic activity for thinkers.

"People who are in orienteering are people who like to solve things," says Jon Nash, a spokesman for the US Orienteering Federation. "There are a lot of computer programmers [in orienteering], but also people who like to read 'whodunnit' novels or do crossword puzzles."

Shultis, who has been orienteering for the past four years, was participating in one of the Cambridge (Mass.) Sports Union's Park-O events. Park-O events aim to be accessible to people not wanting to travel far to compete and provide a relatively easy short-course introduction to beginners. Shultis, also a triathlete, finds the Park-O series a good way to get in a workout for both mind and body.

"The short courses are confidence builders," she says. "If you make a mistake, you can correct yourself in a matter of seconds. In [longer] courses, you can get stuck for half an hour just trying to figure out one control [point]."

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