I was reading over this post by the
"Weekend Warrior's Guide to Adventure Racing" about his approach to navigating in his first race. His post reminds me of those dreams I used to get when I waited tables . . . you know if you've been there . . . there are too many customers, the food is never ready or correct, and the drink orders are piling up. Just thinking about it makes me anxious and my nerves act up in the pit of my stomach. That's how he felt when he arrived to the race and, only then, learned that GPS was not permitted.
I think everyone goes through a "navigation crisis" or two before you start to get the hang of adventure race navigation. It's a rite of passage! I recall taking turns looking through map and compass books as we drove down to a race in North Carolina many years ago -- true story from that race: we were the last team out of the starting area, having plotted our UTM coordinates slowly, but we passed a few teams that were heading in the exact opposite direction just after we left the start (these teams were heading back to the start area and didn't know it). Lesson learned: slow and steady is better than fast and reckless!
UTM coordinates sound mysterious at first . . . but they're really just an X and Y grid system overlaid on a map. The orienteering lingo can be intimidating: bearings, topography, declination, contours, spurs, and the dreaded reentrants. In truth, however, it's really just common sense stuff and the discipline of navigation has developed it's own terminology to communicate specific details of that "common sense."
I suggest looking over
this good visual glossary of orienteering terms as this can go a long way to building your comfort with navigation in general. For example, the first entry in the glossary is for "Aiming Off" and it has an OK definition, but the graphic along with it showing routes from A to B is worth a thousand words
:Aiming Off
- to deliberately aim to one side of a control or
feature so that you know which way to turn upon hitting the feature before
seeing the control.
Of course, no amount of research and reading can compensate for competing in an actual race, so if you're new to it just brace for the fun and have at it. Everyone has their struggles and it's part of what makes the sport fun!