Age Grading
What is age grading?
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 wide availability of age-grading tables has allowed older runners to compete on even terms with younger generations. In many running clubs today, the age-graded champion earns as much, if not more, recognition as the outright (non-age adjusted) winner of the event.
What is age-grading used for?
Age grading can be used to compare performances across different ages and sexes; track your own performance over time; identify your best events; set goals for current and future years; and identify your best ever performance.
You can also use age-grading to predict your race performance. Essentially, this equivalent to assuming that as the distance increases, your average speed will go down, in proportion to the speed of world records at those distances. This seems a surprisingly
accurate assumption for many runners, provided they train for the distances concerned.
I’ve run X minutes for a race. What was my age grading?
Calculate an age-graded performance from a distance and time here.
What time will get me an age-grading of X per cent?
Calculate the times for a given age-grading here.
hi I like all the stuff you have on your site and have spent a fair bit of time looking through it to help me as a 65 year old planning for a marathon next april 2011
I want to question an aspect of age grading that I think is fundamental
I don’t think you can forecast a marathon time based on a 10k using the same WAVA/ age grading
my own experience suggests that most normal runners get worse results as the distance increases
I can guess at a possible reason – a 10k can be trained for more easily , a half marathon takes longer and a marathon a sustained and determined period
In the last 6 years I have not run very much and have 10k results at 57% and 54% but my last two marathons were 44% and 42%
in 1984/85 I trained quite hard and consistently and got half marathon results up to 65% but two marathons at that time were about 56%
so your race predictor needs to allow for this – possibly the age prediction is a potential but only after a full period of training with adequate long runs and possibly even then will only be reached on the 3rd or 4th marathon race say after 2 or 3 seasons of training
I guess the first race time might be slow by say 30 mins on a 4h 30m prediction making 5h more likely
this is of critical importance in setting the planned` pace/ mile splits as we know setting off too fast is fatal to a good result
so perhaps to target pace might need to be around 1 min per mile slower than your predictor would suggest
perhaps you cold seek others views on this
Brian
You are absolutely right that the race predictor only works if you train as much (and as specifically) for the distance you are planning to run at as you did for the distance you are using to calibrate it.
I don’t think the race predictor can reasonably assume that you won’t in fact train for a marathon or half marathon as much as you need to. It tells you what performance you could expect if you did train properly; it is up to you to do the rest!
happy running and good luck with the marathon
Owen
Hi I use this site a lot and have found it to be very accurate in it’s predictions from race to race. However, I wonder if anyone can tell me how often the age grading tables change? I am a 57 year old women and think the grading for my age group have recently changed. I am looking at around 80% – my impression is that the marathon time has got slower but 5k, 10k and half marathon are faster. Is this correct?
The age-grading data don’t change very often, but they have just changed for older women, so you are right.
See my blog post here.
Dear admin,
We are also running the Dharan here in Nepal. We are running 3.5 km run in every saturday. According to your age & grading we are calculating manually which is little bit hassle & it takes time. We rare calculating manually and post it in our website which is taking too much of time. We are also workout to this formula & logic which is not completely done. So, please kindly provide me the formula in excel sheet for calculating Age & Grading or any other option to calculate it (male/female) …… If any kindly suggest
Thanks !!!
Regards
Dhara Run
Hi,
As dharan run asked you in previous question, is there any chances to have a formula to calculate the age grading please. Many thanx
kind regards
santosh rai
Hi Santosh – there is no formula for age grading. It is based on the data for world records at each age, which are published here.
Hi,
I was wondering is there any data that relates your age grading percentage to a percentage of athletes in the same group that would achieve or exceed your time.
Cheers
Slab
Hello friends
I would like to use age grad tablets in order to create a final result/ranking
To each runner which has finished 3 different races.
I’m looking for an Excel, if possible, contains the above columns:
M
Age 5k 10k 15k 20k 21.1k 25k 42.2k
== === === === === === === ===
12 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
13 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
14 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
15
16
*
*
79 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
80 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
F
Age 5k 10k 15k 20k 21.1k 25k 42.2k
== === === === === === === ===
Thank you
I have exactly what you need. We operate a league system in our clu that is based on the age related performace tables.Have a look at our website – and go to the pages dealing with the Club league. The league incorporate steh performance data with a handicapping system to allow people of roughly even peformace ratings but widely different ages to compete on an even footing. You can download a copy of our league tracker from the website. Email me if you have any questions.
What is a safe “min./mile” time for a 68yr old woman. I ran too hard for too long @ a time on Sunday across a heath – HR 135-145! Very tired this week.
Which data is used to age grade young athletes running longer distances when they do not normally run say, 5k, under official race conditions?
What level of granularity does this system have at the younger end …for example …is it specific by year (10, 11, 12 yrs) or does it cover an age group (U14?)
Thanks