The Youth Mapping Program May Map of the Month is Abrams Park in Ridgefield, WA.
This map was created for the city of Ridgefield. Since then, the city has hosted orienteering events and Boy Scout trainings in the park, and even installed a permanent orienteering course!
Interested in having a map made of your school? Learn more about the program and apply here.
This is a transcript of an interview with Kris in May, 2025. It has been edited for clarity and length.
Cristina Luis: Kris, thank you for talking to me and answering my questions. Right off the bat, I know that you have a fun orienteering origin story.
Kris Beecroft: I do.
Now’s your chance to tell the whole world that story.
My mom was Norwegian and she wanted one of her children to know what it was like to live in Norway, and they chose me. I don’t know why.
So I went over in June of ‘75 and …
How old were you then?
Was I 12? [mental math] No, I guess I was 13.
And so within two weeks of getting there, I went to an orienteering summer camp with my cousin Lene, Lene Skielboe, who also does orienteering in Copenhagen. The orienteering camp was put on by Tyrving. I had zero idea what orienteering was. I had no clue. And so we went to this camp. It was a week long camp up in the mountains. We camped out in tents. I’d never camped out in a tent before in my life. And I just remember this one exercise where they put this huge hand-drawn sort of symbol map on the side of the building and it had the control locations circled and it was like a memory-O.
So you had to look at it and figure out where you were going and run out into the terrain, find the control, come back, get your next one. And then at each control was a letter. And so then you had to come back and put the letters together. It was in Norwegian. I’d been in the country for two weeks, so I failed at that. But I just remember that exercise. I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m hooked on this.”
And so this was in the forest, not like a park or urban area?
It was up in the mountains where we were all staying and camping, and then it was the woods right next to it. And yeah, I just fell in love. And that whole week, it wasn’t training, it was like a beginner orienteering camp like getting you started kind of thing and…
Like Orienteering games.
Just games, yeah.
I remember one time we walked on a trail, led by this guy called Kristoffer Staver. He was a big name in early orienteering in Norway. He and his brothers were very involved in forming the infrastructure of orienteering in Norway. Kristoffer and his wife Elvy, they’d walk down the trail and point out features on either side we’d have to match it up with our map.
And so then you spent a whole year in Norway.
I spent a whole year in Norway. I ran orienteering that whole year with Tyrving. I did Sørlandsgaloppen with them. We took buses over to events in Sweden. We had training camps. We had “vintertrening” at night running around the streets and the street lights. Yeah. Everything about that was just magical.
So obviously a life-changing year for many reasons.
Completely life-changing.
And so you came back and your mom was not an orienteer before you were.
No. She had done orienteering when she was a kid. And she belonged to Tyrving, but she did track and field. I think high jump was her big thing. And she actually won medals. She was good at high jump, but her sister and brother were huge into orienteering when they were younger with Tyrving. They were all members of the club, each doing their own thing. So she knew what orienteering was, she just had never really been into it.
I came back and all along she knew I was orienteering. I came back and said, “I really want to try and keep doing this. I really love it.” I have no idea how she found the Quantico Orienteering Club. Pre-internet! Quantico used to have little blurbs in the Friday weekend section of the Washington Post. So I guess she found one of those and we went down to Mawavi Happyland in Prince William Park and it was me and mom and a bunch of Marines and we walked up and they were like, “Can we help you ma’am?” My mom was like, “We’re here to do orienteering.” So she used to go and just wait for me and then after a couple of times she’s like, “I’m just going to go for a walk in the woods.” And she would take a map and she would do it and so soon she was orienteering too.
Right. Reluctantly at first…
Yeah. Yeah.
So we kept orienteering. And then there was a guy at Quantico at the time, Phil Menagh, who was a Marine there. I guess he saw promise in me or was encouraged because they didn’t have any young people at all in the club, and so he started teaching me the basics and how to do things. And then the next year, I think it was ‘77, the US champs were at Pocahontas State Park right down here in Richmond.
I went and I won my age category. And then of course I was completely hooked. Yeah.
So, at that point you were 14 or 15.
Yeah.
Okay, and so that was the beginning. Hooked in Norway, hooked again in Virginia, and then did you just keep doing it? Did you have any gaps or do you just keep orienteering, even all through college?
Yeah, I was always orienteering except while I was pregnant. I kept orienteering in college because I got to Virginia Tech and they had a little club that Ed Jaeger had been part of and sort of started and so I came down there and I didn’t even know–I picked Virginia Tech because it was an in-state school. I didn’t know they were orienteering down there, so that was all just a bonus. And there were five or six stalwarts down there and we put on a couple of events and we would travel to events. We went out to St. Louis once, we went to West Point once. So I managed to orienteer the whole time I was at school, too. That was good.
I’ll tell you this. I went through the worst parts of my marriage when my husband was like, “I don’t want you orienteering blah blah.” So, I tried to tone it down for a while. But then I was like, “[redacted] you, I’m divorcing you and going orienteering.” You can put that in. I don’t care.
Because that’s important for people to see, that you can go through a time of life where things are harder.
It was harder. Although, I will say I was six months pregnant with Caitlin, I think. And I was a control monitor for the Men’s Team Trials or something. I’ll have to look it up. But yeah, I was sitting there just so big, sitting at the control.
April of ‘87. That was before I started recording on Attackpoint. Now I’m sad I didn’t record an Attackpoint sooner than I did because I keep wanting to go back and look things up. I’m like, “I wasn’t on Attackpoint.”
Because Attackpoint is like a diary.
It’s like my diary.
Yeah. I have 23 years.
I go back and I’m like, “My god, look at all this stuff I was doing.”
There are times I read things and it brings back all these little memories.
Yeah. I agree.
All right. But at some point you were on the US Team.
Yeah. I made the US team for the first time when WOC was in Bendigo, Australia. What year was that? ‘85?
Yeah, ‘85
The team trials were at West Point. And the only cover of ONA [Orienteering North America] I’ve ever made was from that Team Trials. It was like me and Peggy and Kristin Hall and someone else sitting on a stone wall. I was actually first alternate, but Kristin Hall was starting high school. She made the team. But I think her parents said no, she could not miss going to school for this. She was not happy at all. But I was very happy because that meant I got to go.
Was this your first international experience since Norway as a kid or had you gone places?
Yeah, probably. This was before I actually met my now ex-husband. I met him in March the night before I was leaving for Australia. We went on our first date and I think I told someone in Australia, “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” And then later in our marriage when he started complaining about orienteering I was like, “Dude the day after our first date I left for a month to go orienteering.”
Should have figured that out then.
And then when he asked me to marry him, I told him, I’m like, “Okay, I just need you to understand I am never going to stop orienteering.” Like I literally told him this. I am never not going to orienteer. And he said, “Okay.” And then he went back on it.
This is a good lesson for readers.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is why pre-marriage counseling makes a lot of sense. Make sure everyone’s on the same page about these things.
Yeah.
Kids and orienteering.
And finances.
Right, finances, kids, orienteering, in some order.
And how was the WOC experience in Australia?
It was great. We went the week before. We were over there, a week ahead of time or a week and a half ahead of time or something and went to the Victoria Championships the weekend before and then did some training in between. And then it was WOC and it was all great. We were staying in dorms on some college campus. And I think I was only running the relay.
There was a sickness that ran through the campus and a lot of orienteers got very sick and I was one of them. And so the night before the relay, I was up all night vomiting. And I came out of the bathroom at 5:00 a.m. And Peter, who was the coach that year, was standing there and he’s like, “You’re not running today, are you?” I’m like, “No, I’m not.” But there were people getting off the buses that were taking runners to the arena. They were getting off the buses. They’re like, “You need to stop the bus. I need to vomit.”
Okay that’s bad.
It was bad. So yeah, I didn’t get to run.
But you did a lot of orienteering.
Yeah, we did a lot of orienteering. I love the terrain. It was gold mining terrain.
At this point in the interview Kris and Cristina started perusing the November, 1985 issue of Orienteering North America. Check it out, you might recognize quite a few orienteers who are still active today!
Was it just an individual and a relay? Is that it?
Yeah, I believe so. That sounds right.
And then did you do another WOC?
In Norway. Was it ‘97? Let’s go into the wayback machine, shall we?
‘97 was in Norway. In August.
Did you like Norway?
We’ve been sucked into another issue of ONA.
“Norway’s hot WOC”. Yeah, it was so freaking hot that year. Yeah. I had horrible horrible times.
Was it good to be running in Norway or did you find it was just so hard?
No, it was fun. We had a fun time.
Did you act as a translator?
Yeah. And now I’ll say I had traveled internationally before Australia. You just made me think of that when you said translator. We went to the university championships.
We went to university championships in Denmark. When was that? ‘84. I have to look it up. ‘83 or four. I think ‘84 and then we went to O-Ringen after that.
And so that was it for WOC then…
That was it for WOC.
but you kept orienteering…
Kept orienteering, still orienteering to this day. Then I started volunteering. In Quantico I was president twice, I think vice president a couple of times, secretary, newsletter editor, even while I was in college. And then I was course setter for some A meets, I was meet director for some A meets. I think I was meet director for a North American champs at some point. Yeah I just started doing more administrative stuff.
And eventually that took you to the OUSA board.
Then to the OUSA board and presidency for two terms. Then I was president of RMOC a couple of times. I wanted to give back to the sport.
You have a good organizational mind and you use that to give back to the sport. That’s what you do.
And so are you still involved then with clubs where you are now?
Yeah. Yeah. Not so much with Quantico because they’re so far away and they’re so freaking big. They don’t need my little baby help. I help run events with the Central Virginia Orienteering Club based out of Richmond. It’s a very tiny club. But I’m setting courses in June.
And you helped with The World Games a few years ago.
Where I let you down so horribly. [Kris got Covid partway through the week and had to leave early.]
No, not exactly, you played a key role in the organization and execution!
So now you’re an adult. Your kids have been out of the house for a while. Not that parenting is ever done, but the kids are out of the house. And you can travel to events. What are your favorite places to go orienteering?
Scotland.
Yeah, you like the Scottish Six Days. Which is one of my favorites, too. I love it.
My favorite. I looked this summer, but with the big wedding [Kris’ son is getting married] in September, I can’t afford it because I’m paying for most of the wedding.
Yeah, it overlaps with school for us.
So, yeah. Yeah, Scottish Six Days for sure. I also do love what’s it called? Like the kettle moraine terrain around Michigan.
Wisconsin and Michigan. Yeah,…
Yeah, I love Wisconsin. Those Cat maps. Love them.
Those are really good.
And, you know, I like Scandinavia fine. I don’t know. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite.
I think Norwegian terrain… I mean you learned in what I consider some of the toughest terrain.
Yeah.
Especially Tyrving, on the west side of Oslo, it’s hard to move.
Yeah. No, that’s it. It’s hard to move.
There are other places, parts of Sweden that are technically as difficult but it’s easier to move.
Yeah.
Okay, Scotland.
Yeah. I would say Scotland. That’s my favorite.
Yeah, Iook at what my drink is sitting on! [Cristina pulls up an Scottish Six Days Oban 2011 slate coaster and shows it to Kris]
I don’t have that one, but I’ve been to Oban.
Yeah, because they’ve been back there.
Yeah.
I’d love to go back.
We should plan for the next one. It should be in ‘27.
‘27. Sure.
Pencil it in.
Maybe we’ll leave it with that everyone should join us ‘27.
Okay, but for real, do you have any final thing to share with our readers?
My life has been completely shaped by orienteering.
I don’t know what my life would have been like if I didn’t have orienteering in my life, I have no idea. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. But ever since I started in Norway, it’s like almost all of my vacations are wrapped around orienteering. When I plan out my year, it’s like, okay, where are the big orienteering events this year? What am I going to hit this year in orienteering? For local events I have them all planned out each season. I work my other life events around those so that I don’t miss them. So yeah, I don’t know what my life would have been like without orienteering.
Right. And you can say it’s shaped your relationships.
It shaped my relationships, for sure. My traveling for orienteering was a big reason for my divorce, because I just didn’t hang around the house all day. And, you know, I do adventure races because of orienteering.
And friends, how many of your friends are from orienteering?
And that’s it. I’m going to send you pictures and almost all the pictures have other people in it because it’s… those are like my longest lasting relationships ever are with orienteering friends and then the advent of Attackpoint because it used to be you would see people at a meets and get all caught up in their life right in between A meets and you had no idea what happened and then Attackpoint came along. It’s like now you can follow along the whole time. It’s kind of cool. But those are my longest lasting relationships are orienteering friends and…
Yeah I go orienteering for the thrill of the sport but also for the social part of it. I don’t like going to national events on my own and staying in a hotel room by myself. I like to be with other people and see all my friends and hang out. Makes it fun.
I mean some of the people that you went to WOC with in 1985 are people you travel with now, 40 years later.
Yeah, yeah, Gail and Peter [Gagarin] and I just stayed together at West Point. And where were we? Rochester.
That’s awesome. I think that’s something we miss sometimes with bringing in new people to orienteering, how important that people feel included and that there’s a social aspect.
Right. Right.
It’s so important to make people realize that they can be part of this family. Yeah.
We are a welcoming crowd. I also really think that was a big change in the junior scene when people realized, this has to be more social than just orienteering. We need more social things for the juniors so that they want to come and hang out. So that was a big turning point. But yeah, sometimes I sit and wonder what I would have been like without orienteering.
I don’t know. You probably still would have been cool, but just it would have been something else. I don’t know. Quilting? Or gardening.
Yeah. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s scary to think about how much it has influenced my life. Which is why, again, as an aside, mom’s obituary was so full of orienteering. It shaped the latter half of her life. I mean, she met her husband through orienteering,
So, yeah, it’s crazy.
Yeah. Yeah. We’re all shaped by orienteering. That’s part of why I want it’s great to talk to people like you whose lives have been shaped by orienteering for so long. Because there’s a lot of interesting little turns in life and tidbits.
Yeah. It’s funny too when I meet other people who are into niche anything and they try to explain I’m like, “Yeah, I get it. Trust me.”
45th Billygoat Run!
The May Forum will be all about how your club can create and foster an online community! Hear from QOC members Sharmagh Yepremian and Kathleen Lennon as they talk about how they use social media in their club, and give tips for how to do it in your own.
Join us on Google Meet on Thursday, May 22nd at 8:30pm ET.
Add to your Google Calendar.
This summer Orienteering USA is providing support to 30 National Team and Youth Development Program athletes participating in events in Europe. Some, like Ali Crocker (CROC), are veterans competing for the last time at the World Orienteering Championships. Others, like youngsters Kendal O’Callaghan (RMOC) and Alex Eriksson (ICO), are part of OUSA’s first officially supported team to the European Youth Orienteering Championships. All of our athletes are training hard now and preparing for their summer competitions and training camps, and we’ll keep you updated on all the action.
Here’s a schedule of events featuring Team USA orienteers this summer:
In addition to cheering these athletes on from home, you can also lend a hand financially. Help these athletes reach their summer fundraising goal of $6,000 ($200 per athlete)!
Make a donation by using via OUSA’s donation page (select “4 National Team”) and then share the image above on social media to get others to pitch in!
Rochester hosted an Ultralong NRE course with wave starts. This enabled a mass start experience with the people in your own age class.
Host: Rochester Orienteering Club (ROC)
Venue: Mendon Ponds Park, Rochester, NY
Event Director: Rick Worner
Course setter: Sergey Dobretsov
Two Sprint NREs in one day in the western NY city of Buffalo.
Host: Buffalo Orienteering Club (BFLO)
Venues:
Event Director: David Cady
Course setters:
All photos by Evalin Brautigam.
Photo album from Evalin Brautigam
The OUSA April Spotlight is on National Team member (Elite Squa) Keegan Harkavy, from Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is a transcript of an interview with Keegan in April, 2025. It has been edited for clarity and length.
Cristina Luis: Welcome Keegan! I would like to hear how you got your start orienteering.
Keegan Harkavy: I had always known what orienteering was because I grew up next to Barb [Bryant] and growing up next to Barb, it’s kind of a foregone conclusion that you’ll know what orienteering is. I think somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remember Barb always trying to get me and my two sisters to do it.
But it really started in sixth grade when she came into my school to teach us orienteering. And I can’t really remember what we did. I think we did some maze-Os, maybe some grids, but I remember really enjoying it. I was quite good at it and as a hyper-competitive sixth grader that was something that was exciting. I remember just having a good time and, Barb being Barb, she got really excited about this and pushed to get a team from Cambridge Street Upper School to go to Junior Nationals.
She started coaching us and she brought us to Junior Nationals. She put a lot of work into us. She would drive us places. She would feed us pizza. I remember a lot of games of Catan. And it was a very wholesome, welcoming community. And then we went to Junior Nationals and I think we did quite well. I ran Yellow and thought it was so hard and I remember getting to trail junctions and going the wrong way and being so upset with myself. But I really loved it and Barb made it super easy to continue. Once she stopped working with us, Ethan Childs was there. It was an easy way to enter orienteering, especially as someone whose family didn’t do it.
Barb and I share a driveway [in Cambridge, MA]. It was always easy to go do things. And one of the early meets I remember most specifically is when she took us to a Harriman [NY] training camp. That was the first time I think I remember actually orienteering. I did a control pick with Dave Yee following me and I think I missed every single control in the control pick. [Editor’s note: you can even read a blog post that Keegan wrote back then about the training camp.]
It was probably a 3k course that took me an hour and a half. I did not understand Harriman at all, but it was awesome. And again, we played board games when we got back. We cooked food. And to this day, that kind of intense training camp of three or four days, with food, board games, and orienteering is still what I live for and I think it is the most fun thing you can do over a weekend.
Yeah, that’s something I think we should be pushing our youth to do. You don’t have to go super far, just have a weekend like that.
Yeah. And to me, especially at that age, the maps didn’t matter. It was all just being with people. It was about the community. I love board games. So, the fact that we were playing Catan 24/7 was huge.
I came out to Southwest Spring Week in eighth or ninth grade and it was me, Ethan Childs and Erin Shirm living in a house together. We played every variant of Catan we could think of for a week straight. And it was again excellent orienteering. I remember that was when I learned how to do contours. We did a contour thing on the open terrain of Arizona where it was rolling yellow grass and being able to see them out in front of me was the first time I was like, “I can actually use these to navigate. They’re not just like a fun little thing on the map there for extra…”
Not just decorations!
Yeah, and I remember coming home from that and as we were driving I would see contours on the terrain around me. I would visualize the lines going across it and think I was some sort of superhero or something.
Yeah, I think you’re talking about the Route 83 areas. We call them the grassy yellow maps and you’re not the first person who has said that that’s where they first had contours pop for them and really see it. So that’s cool.
Yeah. Yeah.
It’s harder to see that stuff in New England woods.
Okay, so that describes your entry and school years. Were you able to keep orienting once you hit college?
Yeah, college has been an interesting experience. I think I’ve both been most attached and farthest from orienteering throughout college.
When I’m in school, I find it very hard to train. This is kind of on me. I think there are training opportunities. A lot goes on in Boston. I have access to a car. I could do a lot of New York events, but just like you get into a bubble of school, you do work, you do all the things. And it’s hard. Throughout college, I really have not done much besides go to big events. However, at the same time, I’ve felt myself really wanting to compete hard at certain points throughout college and really wanting to see how far I could push it. And every summer, I’ve actually been in Europe training. And that’s kind of how I’ve stayed mostly on top of orienteering skills in particular. Or things have gone well because I’ve kept in shape throughout the year. I’ve been running with a running club. I’ve run marathons. I’ve run half marathons.
I haven’t gotten exponentially faster, but I have continued to improve and I’ve continued to at least hold steady. So when I have had time to do really intense orienteering in the summer, I’ve had decent results. And also in particular in my sophomore year, I decided I really wanted to see how good I could get. And I was coming up to my last year of JWOC and I had an opportunity to study abroad. I picked Edinburgh where Thomas Laraia is training and where there’s a great team. I got to spend six months in Edinburgh training with the team. And that was by far the most I’ve ever trained. It was probably the best shape I’ve ever been in. It was not flawless because I got injured about halfway through from overtraining, but it really gave me an opportunity to try orienteering at a much higher level than the US provides.
There were much more frequent trainings, much higher level competition throughout. And again, while I was there, it was the most engaged in orienteering I’ve ever been and the most dedicated to results. I think in the US, it can be kind of hard to keep that fire alive. At least it has been for me. When I’m at school, no one knows what orienteering is. I’m surrounded by world-class athletes, and that can be motivating sometimes, but at Harvard they’re very separated from us. So, I find it demotivating a lot of the time. But there it was like, “I have a chance”. I’m racing against really good foreign orienteers in general. I’m holding my own. I feel like I’m getting faster. I feel like I’m getting better. And as a result of that, I did very well at JWOC that year, even being injured. That mindset of all or nothing that I was feeling really propelled me to do well there.
And when you’re getting good results, when you’re training and it’s feeling good, it’s really easy to keep wanting to do that.
And so now that you’re about to graduate you’re setting yourself up to do that? To be in a place where you can just train and compete and focus on orienteering?
Yeah, as I was looking at what to do next, I realized I had an opportunity to try training at an intense level for a year or two. I know from being at Harvard that when I’m working, especially in the US, I don’t have the right motivation or mindset for orienteering. I’m not amazing at splitting focus between work and orienteering.
So I began looking for ways to really orienteer hard for a year and see what I could accomplish, similar to what I did when I went to Edinburgh. But this time instead at the senior level. That idea was helped by the fact that [fellow National Team member] AJ [Riley] was also looking for basically this exact same thing. AJ was pretty sold on grad school. I applied for grad school but it was not really what I was looking for. I don’t think I know what I want to do in my life well enough to go spend money on grad school, and I haven’t worked in the same way AJ has to save up.
Harvard has a limited number of travel fellowships for graduating seniors, meant to help you develop professionally and as a person. Generally the travel bit of it is to give you deep cultural immersion in another country. They want you to be in one place and they want you to be learning a culture and learning about yourself in a way that you don’t really have to worry necessarily about the money you’re making or your career. This was quite exciting for me. This is something that I thought would give me a very good opportunity to both orienteer, grow as a person and be in a foreign country.
So, I submitted an application to teach orienteering in Sweden. I’ve done a ton of education work with orientering through Navigation Games. I have taught civics and taught at my religious school since 8th grade. They liked the idea, so I got a fair amount of money, and help with getting a visa.
Next year I’ll be Gothenburg, Sweden, living with AJ. The grant is for education, and I do have to write some reports on that, but the goal is really to see what I can do with orienteering and see how far I can push it. Also, to understand what orienteering, education, and the outdoors means to me going forward. Is this a thing that I want to continue at a high level? Is this a thing that I want to just go to the big meets, but not continue to train at a high level? Where does education fit into this? These are all questions I’m struggling with.
I don’t expect to answer all of them, but it will be a really cool opportunity and I’m excited to see what I can do. And we chose Gothenburg because really it seemed like the best place in the world to orienteer.
It is close to Norway, so, at least close to the best place.
Yeah. Yeah. We looked at Norway. We were thinking Sweden was a little bit cheaper,, maybe not quite as good a terrain, but pretty high level terrain…
I think in Gothenburg you’ll be able to train all winter in the terrain, which is harder to do in most of Norway. And the terrain in western Sweden offers good variety.
It’s cool. It’s like a university town as well, it seems like. So, a lot of young people.
This sounds like an awesome opportunity. Is this something open to anyone graduating student at Harvard?
There are a couple of different fellowships. It’s actually pretty competitive. This one is the URAF Postgraduate Travelling Fellowship. It’s just a few people who get it each year.
You mentioned something a little earlier about when you did your semester abroad in Edinburgh. You said that you got injured because you hadn’t been training as much before. Just this morning I had a conversation with a coach about this, where American orienteers go to Europe, which is great, and then they’re not ready for the training. So, when do you leave for Sweden and how will you prepare yourself physically?
Yeah, that’s a great question. If we rewind back to Edinburgh, I think why I got injured was twofold.
It was one, yes, the level of training was really high, but it was secondly that I was in a new country, in a new place, a little bit antisocial, I didn’t really know how to make friends super well. I wasn’t in school all that much. So orienteering became my whole social group. And not just that, it was when I wasn’t doing that, I had all this time on my hands and I just went, “I have time, I might as well train.” And there was definitely a personal side there of I just was going on long runs. I was personally putting in too much work and feeling good about it and seeing good orienteering results.
Mhm.
Coming into this year, I think there are two things I have to my advantage. One is that the year-long thing makes it a little easier. Back then I was training super hard for a race that was six months out and I knew that was all I had and I was like, “I want to be as good as I can for JWOC. I want to push as hard as I can.”
Secondly I was like, “This is all I’m doing.” In Sweden I will face the same issue. However, I think I have it a little bit easier because I have a year there. I think more time is good. I’m also less race dependent here. I’m not like training to do really well at WOC.
I’m just training to see how good I can get in general. so I have a little bit more flexibility in my training. I think also I am at a place in my life where I’m much better at making friends, much better at entertaining myself outside of orienteering. I think moving there with AJ will also help this. I will not be alone.
I will have a partner, someone going through a very similar situation. We’ll be able to keep each other dedicated and on a strict training schedule. Also on the social side, helping me go out and find things to do so running doesn’t become my only source of joy and how I deal with all of my emotions. Secondly, last time I finished my semester at home and went right to Scotland. And while at school I do train, it’s not at a high level. This summer I have most of the summer. I’m going to be traveling for some of July, but I’ll be back by August 1st and I won’t be leaving until at least the first week of September.
So, I’m hoping a designated training block of just base building, getting to a nice place, and then two or three weeks of getting my feet under myself there will help me stay a little bit more stable in the long run.
Mhm.
I’ve been injured a couple times now. That was my first injury and since then I’ve been injured a couple times. I think I know a little about how to take care of myself. I know a little bit better about what gets me injured.
I say that when I’m going to be running a marathon tomorrow on no training and I’m probably going to injure myself. [Editor’s note: Keegan ran a 3:03 marathon that day and did not injure himself!] Do as I say, not as I do. But I’m hoping that combination will be good. I also am hoping to rely on AJ quite a bit because I think he’s a very intelligent…
He’ll be your safety rail.
I think he thinks through his training pretty well, yeah.
Yeah. It sounds like you are being very thoughtful about how you’re approaching it.
Yeah..
There’s a little bit of experience and wisdom that comes into that. So you’re not going to race anything this summer?
I’m not racing this summer. And I’ve kind of taken the spring off.
So you really have nothing getting in the way.
Yeah.
Awesome. Sounds really good.
Okay, let’s do some rapid fire! What’s your favorite board game?
We’ll say Settlers of Catan. I don’t actually know if I still like to play it, but historically most hours in it.
Okay. What’s your college major?
Physics.
Favorite place you’ve orienteered?
Most interesting terrain I think was… Oh, I’m going to get ridiculed for this. Hungary 2018. I thought that JWOC was super cool. And then Uppsala, Sweden.
Oh, and Edinburgh for sprint. Edinburgh for sprint is the best in the world. It’s awesome.
Your favorite food.
Ice cream.
Give me your pet peeves.
…
I’m sure I have some.
Maybe you’re just a really chill person and you don’t have any pet peeves.
Yeah…I don’t have a lot of pet peeves, no.
I’ll give you a funny one. I don’t like when the finish is far from the area that you have to rest in, a remote finish.
That’s cool. An orienteering pet peeve specifically.
Not a fan.
That’s a good one. Read any good books recently?
Ooh. I’m reading Empire of Silence. It’s the first one. It’s the Sun Eater Chronicles. There are seven of them. I don’t actually know if they’re Chronicles. Very good.
How about TV shows? Are you watching any TV?
I haven’t watched anything good in a while.
Okay, that’s good then. Favorite sports teams? Do you watch any sports?
All Boston.
All Boston, that’s the right answer.
Yeah, I’m a fair weather Bostonian fan, which means I follow the Boston sports team that is doing the best at the moment.
So, right now it’s the Celtics.
Yeah, been that way for a couple of years.
And your proudest orienteering result?
The JWOC Relay 2023, in Romania. Or the Long that year.
Favorite hike?
My favorite mountain is Lafayette [in NH], taking the Old Bridle Path. You hit Lafayette and Little Haystack in Lincoln. I think it is stunning.
The favorite hike I’ve done is a week and a half backpacking trip with a friend of mine freshman year around Mount Blanc in Switzerland. The vibes were pretty immaculate.
That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. So, maybe this is going to be the same thing, but I was going to ask you what your most epic outdoor trip was.
That was the most visually epic. It wasn’t very challenging, we were staying at hotels every night.…
That’s awesome.
Yeah. Okay, when I was 11, I did the Long Trail, which was kind of crazy.
Who’d you do that with?
My mom. Yeah, she dragged me for 300 miles along that trail.
How long did that take you?
We did three weeks of it when I was 11 and I don’t think we quite finished. Then we went back a year or two later and finished it.
I did Owl’s Head two weeks ago and that was 12 and a half hours of hiking, five in the dark, snow everywhere. That was probably the most physically demanding hike I’ve ever done.
Awesome.
Okay, this is the last thing. What advice would you give to any young readers that want to get better at orienteering? What do they need to do? Other than live next door to Barb.
Yeah, that’s a good one.
I’ll give two pieces of advice. I think finding a community is the number one thing to do. And that kind of gives rise to the second piece of advice, which is just training consistently. I think you get excited about training by having a community. What’s kept me involved for all these years is every race I go to, I know I will love the people there.
And the other thing, I think is something that I do very well. Even though I don’t necessarily train as consistently as some of my peers or don’t do as much armchair stuff, I think I have a good mentality of racing. I get that through every time I see my peers and my friends. I want to compete with them. So I think having a good community of people that you’re not just friends with, but you’re in a little healthy rivalry with can be really good. I think it can be very easy in the US to not train hard, to go out to the woods and run for 45 minutes and do a training. Or go out on a run and run for 45 minutes just to kind of stay in shape.
And I think one of the things that really separates Americans from the Europeans is that they are attacking every single control out there. If you look at tracks you’ll see that they’re not statistically that much straighter than ours. They still make mistakes. And if you look at track times we have some pretty fast track runners. Not the fastest–top end JWOC people are crazy quick. At least on the men’s side some of us are fit enough to kind of compete there and I think the big difference comes down to that they train running high speed. They train bashing through the forest, which I think a good community helps you with. One of the things I was loving in Edinburgh was that any race I went to I knew I was going to have to push really hard if I wanted to do anywhere decently.
And the prevalence of sprint races helped there as well. With sprint races the navigation is easy enough that you can learn to do that. But I think back to me racing in JWOC when I was getting my best results that summer, I was not actually in much better shape–I’d been hurt for three months. I was definitely in better navigational shape, but I think the thing that I was really in the right mindset for was I was finishing every race as exhausted as I’ve ever finished a race. And I think in the US a lot of times I finish a race and I’m like okay I could go run another 10k because I’m held back by either my navigational skill or I’m just held back from being like that’s a big hill. I don’t want to run it.
And the best way I have of overcoming that hurdle, I think, is just finding people who you want to beat and racing them a lot.
Totally agree! Thank you for taking the time to chat today, Keegan, and good luck in Gothenburg!
The Youth Mapping Program April Map of the Month is Lexington Montessori School in Lexington, MA. This map was created in 2021 and is still being used extensively!
This course was first used for an 11-week orienteering course for middle school students, and has since been used for a shorter Intro to Orienteering course for younger students, to teach general map skills, to map noteworthy trees for an outdoor education project, and even to map sugar maples for tapping!
“We love being able to use the woods and fields in a more deliberate way. It adds visual-spatial learning to the outdoor experience and gives us a new purpose for outdoor activities.”
Interested in having a map made of your school? Learn more about the program and apply here.
Unfortunately, the planned Saturday afternoon relay event was cancelled due to the winter weather, which had caused a 2-hour delay to the morning event.
The photos above are all by Evalin Brautigam and the West Point Public Affairs Office