Age grades

Thought I’d devote this post to ‘age-grading’, which is quite a nifty little calculation process that (among many other things) enables comparisons to be made in one’s running performances over time. Following is a useful description I’ve collected from a couple of running sites:

Age grading is a way to adjust an athlete’s performance according to age and gender. The age-grading tables were developed by the World Association of Veteran Athletes, the world governing body for track and field, long distance running and race walking for veteran athletes. The tables were first published in 1989. The tables work by recording the world record performance for each age at each distance, for men and women. Where necessary, the world record performances are estimated. For example, the world record for a 53 year old woman running a 10km is 35:01. So if a 53 year old woman finishes a 10km in 45:18, she has an age-graded performance of 77.3% (which is 35:01 divided by 45:18).

The purpose of age-graded tables is twofold:
• To correct a person's performance, no matter what his/her age, to what it would have been (or will be) in their prime years. By so doing, all kinds of interesting comparisons can be made. You can compare back to your best performances. You can compare your performances to other people of any age, such as open-class athletes, etc.
• To provide each individual with a percentage value which enables them to judge their performance in any event without bias to age or sex. No matter how old one gets, this performance percentage will always be judged against the standard for one's age. As your performances decline with age, so do the world standards that the tables use to calculate your percentage, giving a true measure of your performance.

The standards correspond approximately to world record marks for a person of that age and sex in that event.
• 100% Approximate World-Record Level
• Over 90% World Class
• Over 80% National Class
• Over 70% Regional Class
• Over 60% Local Class

The calculator seems to be updated every 4-5 years with the most recent update evidently published just this year. It is available at this link - http://www.howardgrubb.co.uk/athletics/wmalookup15.html

If you’ve never fiddled around with these tables before, I highly recommend it. Especially if you have some running times from years ago and want to see what sort of effort would be required at your current age to beat them, on an age-graded basis.

Ever since I discovered age-grading, I’ve had in the back of my mind a stretch goal of achieving a “65%” age-graded score for the times for each of my four main distances - 5K, 10K, half-marathon and marathon. At the universities I’ve attended, 65% is generally the start of a ‘credit’ grade. Not by any means world-beating, but a mark or score to be reasonably satisfied with.

Until a couple of days ago, my all-time best age-graded scores for those distances were as follows:
• 5K - 63.46%
• 10K - 60.92%
• Half Marathon - 55.32%
• Marathon - 52.53%

I had hoped to secure my first ‘credit’ score on 15 August when I lined up for a 5K time trial. At that stage, I hadn’t become aware of the 2015 version of the age-graded tables and so, based on a previous version, was aiming for a sub-22:52 time. Needless to say, I fared quite badly, blowing up after just 1K and staggering home in a lamentable 27:28 (which, for the record, equates to a score of 52.94%).

That said, under the new 2015 age-grades, I would actually have needed a time of 22:22 to achieve a credit score for the 5K distance.

The failure in that 5K run came hot on the heels of two other ordinary performances in the Bay Run and the City to Surf. All-up, it was a two week stretch that’s probably best put down to experience!

Finally, a couple of other developments to report.

First, I’ve now paid a holding deposit to my travel agent for entry into the 2016 New York half marathon. The tentative date is Sunday 20 March 2016, but for some reason, no one seems able to confirm that as being the official race day. Which makes it a little frustrating for those of us on the other side of the world who can’t yet take advantage of some very enticing airfares that seem to be on offer at the moment. On my list of scheduled races, the New York half is next in line after the Melbourne half marathon on 18 October 2015.

And second, I’ve signed up to run a short (3.5K) race over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday 20 September as part of the Sydney Running Festival (which also comprises a marathon, half marathon and a 9K race). I had planned to avoid that event altogether, but I’d also set myself a goal of running five competitive races in 2015, and with the hamstring tear forcing my withdrawal from the Gold Coast half marathon, I needed to find an additional race. Hence the Bridge Run. I have no particular expectations for it. I won’t be altering my scheduled long run (1 hour, 45 minutes) on the day before. And I doubt it will get much of a mention here. But goals are goals and they need to be ticked off! And, of course, it’s always difficult to pass up an opportunity to run across the main deck of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

On the training front, I’m now entering week 5 of the 12 week program for the Melbourne half. With the various races, mileage over the first four weeks has been up and down, with 36.28K the first week, followed by 26.81K, then 35.27K, and then 48.88K last week, when I started adding some additional 5K sessions to double up on a few of the days.

Loathe as I am to start tinkering with the great Hal Higdon’s program, I just felt I needed some more miles in the legs as well as an extra incentive to avoid junk during the day if I knew I was also going to be running that evening. Annoyingly, the fatigue this is inducing probably caught up with me on the weekend when I wasn’t able to complete a reasonably tough 90 minute run (I had to come back later in the day to finish it off). But I will persevere for a few more weeks and see how it goes.