Orient
express
Swift feet and
an agile, analytical mind are keys to success for orienteer Erik
Torniainen
Story by Steve
Lundeberg
Albany Democrat-Herald
As the father of a young daughter,
Erik Torniainen has no problem saying that the new Gibson Hill Park in his
North Albany neighborhood represents a fine piece of recreational real
estate.
But as an orienteer, he can't help
but notice its lack of potential as a site for a meet.
"It wouldn't make a good O park,"
Torniainen said, using the standard abbreviation for his sport. "It's too
small, and everything's too visible."
Torniainen knows, of course, that
the city did not create Gibson Hill Park with orienteering in mind. It's
just that all of the hours spent reading maps and compasses and analyzing
terrain and topography cause someone like Torniainen to look at land a bit
differently than most people.
Orienteering is a sport in which
participants, traveling on foot, on skis or by bike, use their map and
compass skills to find certain points, called control sites, on a course.
The route between the sites is not specified, meaning it's up to each
orienteer to decide the best way to get from one to another. Each site is
marked by a flag resembling a small box kite.
Born in Finland and raised in
upstate New York, Torniainen came to the mid-valley five years ago to go
to work for Hewlett-Packard, where he makes computer models of ink jet
pens. He first got involved in orienteering while he was pursuing a Ph.D.
in mechanical engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
"I'd always been a cross country
skier and liked endurance-type things," said the 31-year-old Torniainen,
who moved to the United States when he was 2. "I had some ski friends who
did (orienteering), and at that time extreme sports were getting popular,
and they said I should try it, that there was nothing as extreme as this -
stream fording and running through briar-filled, nettle-filled
areas."
DAVID PATTON /
Democrat-Herald
 Roller skiing is part of the
training regimen for Torniainen, who has competed three times in the American
Birkebiener, the U.S.'s most prestigious cross country race.
Skin abrasions and irritations
aside, Torniainen tried foot orienteering - foot O - and got hooked on a
sport in which he could combine his love of both the aerobic and the
analytical.
On the course, Torniainen carries a
clue sheet that describes the specifics of each control location, wears a
compass strapped to one thumb and clutches a course map that he folds, for
clarity's sake, to show only the part of the course he's traversing at the
time.
"But I'm always thinking two or
three controls ahead. You have to be able to read things quickly: There's
a hill, a hill, a hill," he said, pointing at contour lines on one of his
maps. "You have to have good experience with maps. If I make a bad
mistake, it can cost me five or 10 minutes. Once I literally wandered off
the map."
Reaching a control site, an
orienteer uses a punch tool that's been left there to mark a card he takes
with him around the course. The tool at each control punches out a unique
pattern of holes, thus verifying the orienteer's visit to the different
sites.
Provided by Erik
Torniainen
 Torniainen marks his punch
card at a control site during an O meet held last September at Champoeg
Park near Canby.
In the type of orienteering known
as score O, a contestant tries to find as many of a course's controls as
possible, in no designated order but in a set time period, and receives a
certain amount of points for each one (coming in late results in a big
loss of points).
This is as opposed to regular O, in
which the goal is to find all of the controls, in sequence, as quickly as
possible.
Torniainen, who is still an avid
runner and skier as well as an orienteer, does two or three O meets a
year. One of about a dozen orienteers living in the mid-valley and a
member of both the Portland-based Columbia River Orienteering Club and the
mid-valley based Oregon Cascade Orienteering Klubb, he said he could
participate in as many as 10 meets per year if he were so
inclined.
Perpetually fit, Torniainen figures
he spends seven to 11 hours per week training for his various activities.
He goes running about five times per week - he's run a 3:03 marathon - and
also blends mountain biking and roller skiing into the life he shares with
wife Rama Prasad, who is also an engineer at HP, and their 1-year-old
daughter Andrea.
While Torniainen has indeed found
orienteering to be the most extreme sport he's undertaken, "cross country
skiing is pretty close," he said.
Three times he's competed in the
American Birkebiener, a 52-kilometer race that's held every February in
Wisconsin and draws nearly 9,000 entrants each year.
"I'm now in the first wave,"
Torniainen said of the Birkebiener's seeding system. "There are 10, maybe
11, waves, each containing 600 to 800 skiers. There is also an elite wave,
which has the top 200 skiers.
 A map and a thumb compass are
the primary tools of the trade for Finnish-born Erik Torniainen of North
Albany, who branched into orienteering from cross country ski racing while
pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Cornell University.
"Each wave starting from 10 and
going to the elite wave has a qualifying time. So the first time you do
the Birkie, unless you have a qualifying time from another race, you start
in the 10th wave, which is where I started. Since then I've skied faster
and made the qualifying time for the first wave. The Birkie has to use
this wave format to manage the number of skiers on the course, and even
with this setup it's extremely crowded on the race trail. All in all it's
the premier cross country ski race in the U.S."
Still, orienteering offers
something to Torniainen that skiing and marathoning don't.
"It's the mental challenge," he said.
"I like running, and I like endurance events, and when I'm doing an O
meet, it just fills my mind. When I get done it's like no time has passed
at all."
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