Adventure racing

Eric Bone, founder of Meridian Geographics, is an expert navigator and accomplished adventure racer. Visit the MerGeo.com team page to learn more about Eric and the rest of the team. Meridian Geographics offers a super sprint AR series, navigation camp, coaching, and course design services to the adventure racing community throughout the west coast.

BEAST adventure race series BEAST is a series of short, weeknight multi-sport races with navigation in the Seattle area, brought to you by Eric and the MerGeo.com adventure racing team. See our home page for upcoming BEAST races, or BEASTrace.com for our full schedule. Navigation Camp Eric teaches intensive weekend-long navigation camps in locations on the west coast. You can see the itinerary for a typical camp by clicking here. If you'd like Eric to teach a camp in your area, please contact him at eric at mergeo dot com. Coaching "We had our best overall Sea2Summit results last year owed in part to having only 10 minutes penalty points in the orienteering section. We couldn't have done it with out your help." Alex Shapleigh, Team Quad Damage

Navigation training is one of the most potent means of improving your team's performance. More than most disciplines, orienteering requires specific skills. Whereas many weeks of training are necessary to increase your fitness level, just a few hours of navigation training can vastly improve your orienteering performance and give your team a significant competitive edge.

Eric will begin by assessing your team's existing skills and deciding, together with your team, which skills to train you in. You will then be trained using a course like those found in adventure races. Eric will walk you through the first part of the course, instructing you in specific skills, then shadow you as you do the remainder of the course on your own. Afterward you will discuss your experience with Eric and receive further advice for tuning your performance. The following week you will receive a written recap of your session.

• Half Day: Cover navigation basics in any of several wooded parks in the Bay Area or the Seattle metropolitan area. Two-and-a-half to four hours, depending on number of people. Cost: $120 first person plus $40 each additional person.

• Full Day: Basic training in the morning; fine tune your skills in the afternoon. Can be conducted in urban parks or in the wilderness for an additional charge. Lunch provided. Cost: $250 first person plus $80 each additional person.

• Two full days: Camp at Teanaway Forks near Cle Elum, Washington. Training time equivalent to two full days as described above. Four meals provided. Cost: $500 first person plus $150 each additional person.

Skills covered may include map reading, orienting the map, taking and following a compass bearing, handrails, distance estimation, aiming off, attackpoints, terrain reading, finding where you are on the map, formulating a strategy to reach a particular point, formulating a race strategy, teamwork, and recovering from mistakes.