I got a call from Britt while she was out on the orienteering course at Newport News Park; she was struggling with Control #4 and I had mentioned to her we thought the park map was wrong on it. Refer to the map below. The Park map shows #4 as position #4, but the actual control is located at the "?"
It's about 250 paces off by my count, or 1/3 of a mile. May not sound like much, but for orienteering that is a long distance and for a permanent orienteering course like the city has set up; they should remedy it. Until then, I guess it will be a tidbit of local knowledge for area orienteers.
On a related note, the course is much more challenging when run out of sequential order. For example, I might go from #5 to #15 instead of taking the controls in order. If you pursue them in order, you're pretty much just staying on the park trails and it's much easier.
That being said, the optimal route from 5 to 15 is up for debate. See the image below with two approaches, one in purple and one in yellow.
The purple is a very tempting route, and only about 1/4 of a mile in distance. The yellow route is all on wide dirt trail, however, and about 2/3 of a mile. If you run a 9 minute mile (which is a pretty tame pace), you can be at control #15 in 6 minutes on the yellow route. The purple route can be through very dense woods with lots of deadfall (courtesy of the storms we've had in recent years) -- when the creek bed is dry it's a bit quicker going but it's still tough to beat 6 minutes via the purple route. It's counter-intuitive, especially to an adventure racer who thinks "I'm not afraid to get off trail!" Turns out, in this case, setting the bravado aside and going the yellow route via trails is certainly easier and less injury-prone. If you're in a situation where you need to gain ground on somebody or take risks, the purple route is certainly an option, but the yellow route is the more sensible choice. It may be a conservative choice, but it's more likely to be the fastest in my opinion.
Now, as the distances get further, an option like the yellow route becomes less attractive because you're covering nearly 3x the distance to get to #15. Like most things in adventure racing, it comes down to assessing the situation and decision making. What's the weather like? How dense is the forest? How sturdy are your ankles? Are the trails clearly marked so you can eat while running instead of concentrating on a compass bearing or reading terrain? These are just some of the things to consider.