Alternative Orienteering Activities during COVID-19

[To be updated] Creative orienteers all around the world find alternative orienteering activities in these difficult times when most orienteering races are cancelled due to the COVID-19 crisis. The activities range from different types of online orienteering competitions to mapping your own home. And those who are lucky enough to be able to train outdoors run orienteering competitions without controls in the forest.

Here we list some activities for you to try out – or to inspire you to make your own variants. Note that some of the activities are time limited (and may already be finished when you read this) – others are limited to participants from a certain club or country.

Please use the comments below to add further activities and events – and help fellow orienteers to be able to enjoy different types of orienteering activities. The ambition is to update this list with further activities from the comments.

Online virtual orienteering competitions

• Lockdown Orienteering Easter Championships. April 10th – 13th 2020, entries closed. Multi-stage online orienteering competition consisting of various online activities, including Catching Features, Running Wild etc. – more info on the Twitter account
• Virtual Temp-O from Portugal. Entries closed.
• Catching Features World Cup 2020. Multi-stage online orienteering competition using the orienteering game Catching Features – 20 competitions from April 11th until June.
• Scottish Catching Features league. Multi-stage online orienteering competition using the orienteering game Catching Features – new competition every Saturday.
• Stay at home 3-days Running Wild Australia. April 10th – 13th 2020, entries closed, but you can still check out the courses.

Daily orienteering-related puzzles

• Route to O-Season (and Route to Christmas – archive of all entries)

• Scottish orienteering daily puzzles and challenges (or via Scottish Orienteering Facebook page)

Course setting competitions

• “Home Office Course Planning Competition” – course setting competition by Wolfgang Pötsch (English language invitation here)
• Norwegian O-Federation has three course setting competitions, more about them here (Norwegian language)
• There are several other local course setting competitions out there, please add in the comments if they are open for anyone

Mapping activities

• Map your home  (use e.g. OpenOrienteering Mapper or OCAD) – OCAD even made a separate symbol set to map your home.

More field checking and drafting. Slowly but surely making progress on the home orienteering map. pic.twitter.com/ufmrr0NkTY

— okansas (@okansas) April 11, 2020

Outdoor orienteering activities

Lucky enough to be able to train outdoors, but no orienteering competitions and no controls in the forest? Here are some ideas.

• UsynligO. UsynligO (which means ‘InvinsibleO’ in Norwegian) is an app which makes orienteering courses available year round – with no need for flags to mark the control points.

Usynlig Foll-o #5: Enda flere UsynligO-løyper lagt ut i bart Follo-terreng. Denne gangen med Tor Lahlum som løypelegger i et av hans yndlingsterreng. Ta med en venn og løp orientering i Sørmarka. #UsynligO #NFO https://t.co/5qAZ52To02

— Håvard Harstad (@havarhar) February 10, 2020

• “GPS-art” on any map / blank piece of paper. If you can’t get to the forest, or you know the forest too well, draw something nice or funny on a map (or a blank piece of paper if you feel very confident in your orienteering) and make some nice orienteering art. Good map reading training. See Frederic Tranchand’s Around the World in 28k here – and see also here

Other online orienteering activities (not COVID-19 specific)

• Running Wild. Choose your on different courses fast. Many courses to pick from – great orienteering technical trainig.

• RouteChoice game. Small game where your task is to pick the shortest route on urban legs.

• Catching Features 3D orienteering game/simulator. The original 3D orienteering game – used for orienteering technical training by many elite orienteers – this is more than just fun. Lots of maps, courses and online competitions available.

• Virtual O orienteering 3D orienteering game/simulator. Arguably the orienteering game with best graphics. Limited number of maps/courses compared to Catching Features and you need a faster computer, but until you have played the maps/courses available this is a great game.

• Virtual Trail-O. Try out virtual trail-orienteering puzzles – lots of them!
• Go4orienteering.  In- and outdoor orienteering exercises – more than 3200 in total!