Sprint Info

University of Maryland Map Notes

Map: 1:4,000 2m contours. Mapper: Ted Good. Map updates 3/5/2026.

The general area to be used is a typical college campus with many buildings, sidewalks, and other paved pedestrian areas, roads, open grassy areas, and scattered trees and ornamental plantings. Topographically, the easternmost part of the campus is quite flat, with the land generally rising gently farther west. Stairways of varying lengths abound. Mapped to IOF ISSprOM 2019-2 Revision 6, with the whole area updated in 2025 through early 2026. North lines are blue (120m apart).

Traffic: Although this event is being held during Spring Break, the campus will not be deserted. Roads will still be open to vehicles, and campus buses will be running. Look both ways before crossing roads and yield to traffic. Students often use scooters and bicycles, and they can go quite fast on the roads and sidewalks. Roads use the darker brown pavement color (possible heavy traffic). Parking lots and sidewalks use the lighter tan pavement color (light traffic).

Vegetation: the large green circle symbol represents very large trees. The smaller green circle is used for smaller trees and bushes. The smaller green circle is also used for trees in narrow strips of grass lining the roads. Some large evergreens with branches low enough  to impact runnability are mapped as 'dark green fight'.

'Open with Scattered Trees' is used when there are too many trees to map individually, or when there isn't room for the larger tree symbol between other symbols .

There are areas where the ground cover is rounded stones the size of gravel. These are usually mapped with the sandy symbol (rough open with black dots).

Olive Green is OUT OF BOUNDS and must not be crossed. Gardens are mapped with olive green. The garden areas can't always be determined by looking at them, especially before and very early in the growing season. Some mulch areas are gardens, and some are not. Please respect the olive green on the map. There will likely be judges on the course noting violators (who are subject to being disqualified). It is always safe to run on cut grass.

Stairs: virtually all stairs have crossable railings that aren't mapped. Don't expect to be able to run across stairs, just up/down them. To improve legibility, small stairways may be extended slightly on the map so there are at least two steps.

Boulders: Boulders are typically less than 1 meter in size but are very distinct.

Complexity in the built environment: it can be difficult to determine at a glance which "uncrossable lines" are walls and which are cliffs/drop-offs. They are forbidden to cross regardless. Where there is a significant change in level and room exists on the map, "cliff tags" are used to show up vs. down, but in many cases, the tags obscured features and couldn't be used.

The map includes several multi-level areas and runnable areas under building canopies. Some are quite small, like walkways over an area, and may be hard to see on the map. Some are large and include buildings/parking garages. Only two levels are mapped, generally the top-most and bottom-most. Unusable entrances are either not on the map or have a purple line to indicate that entry is forbidden. Look for the line of triangles to show the locations of the lower-level entrances/exits.

Specific manufactured objects:

• Henson/Kermit (Muppet) statue is a black circle.

• Testudo statues used black X. Testudo, (UMD mascot), is a giant turtle.

• A helicopter is mapped as a helicopter-shaped building.

•  Large electrical and HVAC boxes are mapped as small buildings (usually minimum sized, but some are large enough to be mapped actual size and shape).

The following are not mapped:

• Dumpsters

• Street lights

• Fire hydrants

• Telephone lines/poles

• Benches

• Picnic tables

• Emergency phone poles

The campus as a whole is never free of active construction sites. These vary in size from very small (e.g., a cordon around a small excavation) to large construction sites where entire new buildings are built. Every effort is being made to keep the map up to date, but projects can pop up without notice and may not be mapped. Mapped construction areas use the purple hash. The area of map under the hash may not, depending on the nature and progress of the activity, accurately represent the actual state of affairs during the event.

The Metro Purple Line runs through the middle of the campus, along the south edge of the event map. The railroad tracks are flush with the road (not raised or below ground), and the road is shared with vehicles. The Metro tracks aren't currently in use, and there is no reason to cross them while on course.

Warm-up & Model Area

Click here for a map graphic showing the UMD/Sprint warm-up area as well as both parking areas and the registration, start and finish locations. There are also model maps for the Sprint available at 1:3000 and 1:4000 scale.

Sprint Course Notes: (Course Setter: Jon Torrance)

Maps will be printed at 1:4,000 except for the Brown, course, which will be printed at 1:3,000. The contour interval is 2m.

Shoes with metal spikes or studs in their soles are forbidden on campus.

The University of Maryland campus is a complex built environment including many nooks and crannies around the edges of buildings, roads, sidewalks, and paths, a mix of passable and impassable walls and fences, landscaped open areas with trees, shrubs, and hedges, and some abrupt changes in elevation that may be difficult to detect on the map at a glance. Route choice at your best possible speed through all this complexity will be the primary challenge. Reading ahead sufficiently, on the map and in the control descriptions, to plan around all relevant impassable features and always know which side of them you should prefer to be on is likely to be rewarded. Of course, so will quick decision making. Yours is the task of getting as close to the ideal balance between well-considered action and swiftly decisive action as you possibly can.

There will be no pretend impassable barriers in the terrain created specifically for this event, with the exception of thick magenta lines just inside portions of the perimeters of multilevel parking garages where it is physically possible to enter and exit the structure but where entry is forbidden for this event because the interior is too complex to map in a way that would allow competitors to successfully navigate inside without luck coming into play. Out-of-bounds on the map will therefore occur only where there is construction activity. Hopefully, no new, unforeshadowed construction activity will pop up in the days before the event but please check at registration and the start for any last minute notices regarding that or any other late-breaking developments affecting the courses.

Other than multi-level parking garages, which are not in play as just explained, the map does not feature any extensive areas offering a choice of more than one runnable level. The complexity of the built environment does, however, include some small scale multi-level features. If you aren't already familiar with how the latest IOF sprint mapping standard dictates these should be depicted, you are advised to study that before the event.

Other than areas with construction activity and areas enclosed by impassable barriers, the only no-go areas on the map are those mapped as olive green. These are flowerbeds or other ornamental plantings. Depending on the season and what the university's gardeners have been up to recently, they are not always easy to distinguish in the terrain, at a glance, from other areas of bare or mostly bare earth without grass cover. In general, there should be little or no reason for anyone to be tempted to run through any olive green. There is one significant exception where an insufficiently attentive orienteer might easily run through a rather sparse garden of ornamental plants just as they approach or leave one particular control that features on two courses. This olive green will be enhanced in the terrain with a barrier of pink streamer tape to make it more obvious the garden mustn't be crossed.

As mentioned in the map notes, the main safety issue for this event is that the terrain will be open to non-orienteers, including pedestrians, human-powered vehicles, small electrically-powered vehicles, and, most dangerous, cars and other, larger, motorized vehicles. All courses will cross multiple roads and there are also parking lots and loading bays in which vehicles may be in motion, even on a Friday afternoon during March Break. Vehicle traffic on campus generally moves fairly slowly, even more so in the non-road areas that are open to them than on the roads, but collisions could nevertheless result in serious injuries. There will be some signage out warning drivers to expect runners crossing roads; unfortunately, it would be impractical to place crossing guards at every possible road crossing point. Participants are therefore implored to exercise adequate caution and make certain while running on any pavement that is open to motor vehicles that it is safe to do so – look both ways before crossing roads but also be alert for motor vehicles on other paved surfaces that aren't clearly pedestrian paths not only closed to motor vehicles but which they aren't allowed to cross in the area in question.

Collisions with pedestrians, cyclists, electric scooter riders, etc., may be reasonably expected to be less dangerous than collisions with cars and larger motor vehicles but can hardly be called safe. We would also appreciate if this event resulted in no significant damage to the reputation of orienteers in general in the minds of the non-orienteers sharing the campus. So please put in your best effort to avoid collisions with them, as well as with your fellow orienteers. A certain amount of running around blind corners and through narrow passages will be unavoidable. Please be careful everywhere on your course such opportunities for a close encounter with little or no warning arise. I commend to your attention the idea that an etiquette of keeping to the right would, if universally observed, reduce the chance of collisions while disadvantaging no one.

The campus is thankfully low on man-made deathtraps but there is some low to the ground piping a very short distance out of the start triangle that could pose a trip hazard to a stressed orienteer trying to focus on the map as they determine how to navigate to the first control. Some pink streamer tape will be deployed to help people see and avoid this hazard.

Even with many controls being tucked out of sight or at least away from high traffic areas, many are quite exposed and given this is an active campus, there is a possibility of a control being stolen or vandalized. There will be some course monitors keeping an eye out in the terrain but not nearly enough to guard all of the controls continuously. If you are absolutely sure you are in the correct spot and there is no control, please proceed with the rest of your course and inform course personnel after finishing.

Jon Torrance, Course Designer