Elizabeth Brown joined Southdowns Orienteers soon after the club’s formation in 1977, having been a member of Mole Valley prior to that time.
On Boxing day 1978 Elizabeth founded - with a couple of her Orienteering friends - what was to eventually become the SO Xmas event.
The first event was at Banstead Wood in Surrey, and over the years the format has taken a number of formats, but since 1997 it has settled as a score event.
For many years Elizabeth was the event organiser, and following her passing away in May 2011 it was felt that it would be a fitting tribute to rename the annual Christmas event in her memory.
Tilgate Forest is the venue for the inaugural Elizabeth Brown memorial Xmas score event on Tuesday 27th December 2011.
Tilgate was first used for the Christmas event in 1980. Elizabeth organised, Steve Jarvis planned. Elizabeth had also been involved with the mapping of Tilgate in the summer of 1979.
Elizabeth was a top-class Orienteer. In the early years of SO, Elizabeth was the club’s undisputed star. She helped put SO on the map. She regularly won the British Championships and the JK throughout her Orienteering career, and was twice crowned World Champion. First as a W80, then 10 years later as a W90.
Elizabeth collected a lot of trophies along the way and the club are indebted to Elizabeth’s family for donating a splendid and unique slate W70 trophy from the 1992 JK at Bigland in the Lake District to be presented each year at the “Elizabeth Brown memorial” SO Xmas event.
In order to allow a good number of people the chance to win the trophy each year, an age-class handicapping system is to be applied to each person’s score.
Only competitors on the main 60 minute score event will be eligible for the trophy.
For those competitors who have scored maximum points within the 60 minutes time limit, their score will be adjusted higher on a pro-rata basis as if they had run for a complete 60 minutes.
All scores will then be adjusted by the % handicapping applicable to their age class. The winner of the trophy will be the competitor with the highest adjusted score.
NB: The handicapping is based on British Orienteering age-class speed data, which can be found in appendix B of the rules and guidelines on their website.
Listed below are the current speed rates. We have adjusted the M/W10 rates as the official speed rates relate to technical difficulty level 2 courses (Yellow standard).
speed rate % handicap Age-class speed rate % handicap Age-class
0.74 160 M10* 0.73 170 W10*
0.70 143 M12 0.62 161 W12
0.80 125 M14 0.65 154 W14
0.84 119 M16 0.67 149 W16
0.90 111 M18 0.70 143 W18
0.92 109 M20 0.71 141 W20
1.00 100 M21 0.82 122 W21
0.92 109 M35 0.71 141 W35
0.89 112 M40 0.69 145 W40
0.86 116 M45 0.67 149 W45
0.82 122 M50 0.63 159 W50
0.77 130 M55 0.58 172 W55
0.70 143 M60 0.53 189 W60
0.64 156 M65 0.48 208 W65
0.57 175 M70 0.42 238 W70
0.50 200 M75 0.35 286 W75
A short prize-giving ceremony will take place as soon as possible after the courses have closed as 12.30 and all competitors have downloaded.
We hope that as many competitors as possible will wish to stay and see the trophy awarded.
Steve Jarvis, December 2011
Posted by on 23rd Dec 11 Filed under: