Apologies. My last full blog here anticipated the start of my summer track season and was, as much as anything, a piece of therapy to help me get my head in gear. I’d just pulled out from my scheduled first race of the year owing to a niggling injury, and I had no idea where things would head next.
Well, I’m glad to say they quickly got back on track, as it were. My back is sorted for now, and the vertigo hasn’t returned. Since then, I’ve raced five times. Well, four really. One was last leg of a sprint relay. We were so far behind when I got the baton that it was just a fast solo run for the match points.
Earlier that evening I’d run a reasonably satisfactory 100 metres. Such are my Club’s team problems at the moment that I had to race in a lower age group, for fourth place. I’d have won my own age group’s race by a street, but our athlete in that race would not have done so well against the youngsters, so we applied some team tactics.
My race time was very similar to my first outing over 100 metres a year ago, and it posted me at equal second place on my UK age group rankings. A reasonable place to start. A couple of weeks later, I raced two 100 metres events in an evening. Both were faster, and I’ve ended up a clear second place on the rankings. I’ve also run, and won, a 200 metres race, the time from which puts me third on the UK age rankings for outdoor competition this year.
At this time of year, I find it useful to process my race times through an age-graded score calculator. Age grading, (sometimes called age-weighting) is something I’d never heard of before entering the ranks of Masters athletics. It’s basically a way to compare any result in an event at a given age, against a result in the same event by someone of a different age. Some age-graded calculators also have the facility to compare men’s and women’s results on a statistically even footing. There are quite a few variations on the calculation tables around, and they get updated every few years. There are also a set of tables dealing with road running events etc. Age graded percentages are a regular feature of the weekly results from Parkruns, for example.
I’m not going to link to any particular calculator from this blog, but a quick web search for something like “Age graded calculator for runners” will show several. Some have some pretty sophisticated maths behind them.
I’ve been using age-graded calculations for several years. A calculator that allows you to enter your precise age, as opposed to, say, just your five year Masters age group, is a really useful tool to help chart annual progress. It goes like this: “If I ran xx.yy aged 60 for 100 metres, is my time of xx.yy aged 61 a better time or worse?” It may be a slower time on the clock, but as I’m a year older, some decline might be expected. Have I a) declined, in age-graded terms, b) stayed about the same, or c) got faster, in age-graded terms?
Overall, I’ve been one of those athletes who, as my Masters career has progressed, has improved his year-on year age-graded score every year. Age-grading has revealed that my best event (that is, consistently my highest age-graded score) is 60 metres indoors. Aged 52 in 2006, by best race gave me a score of 95.11%. My best time in the 2016 indoor season, ten years older, gives me a result of 97.08%.
That is to say, the calculations enable me to compare results 10 years apart, even though the more recent result is 0.37 of a second slower than the 2006 figure. I’ve got slower against the clock, but the tables tell me that statistically, I’ve improved. And what’s more, I’ve improved from an already high score. Very generally speaking, an age-graded score of above 94% is likely to indicate something close to a world class performance. I’m quite chuffed to be up above 97% for my best event!
Age-grading allows all kinds of calculations to be made. Traditionally in the UK, age group rankings in any event are based just on the time the athletes run. Thus, there is no age-weighting in favour of an athlete who might be in the same Masters five-year age category as the person with the fastest time in that category for the event concerned, but is maybe several years older. This might not matter too much between two athletes ages, say, 35 and 39, but between an athlete aged 75 and one aged 79, the issue is far more significant, for example.
Such are the games age-grading allows you to play, that I can calculate what my 100 metres or 200 metres time would need to be to give a 97.08% age-graded score. An intersting way to set targets and measure potential.
In some countries, age-graded percentages are taken sufficiently seriously that medals in national championships are based on them. Thus, an athlete who didn’t actually win a race in his/her age category, might win gold based on having a faster age-graded time than the younger, actual winner! Unsurprisingly, there are mixed views about age-graded scores being used in this way.
Nevertheless, as a training monitoring tool, they are really useful.
Blog from a Faster Master 