What is Age Grading

Have you ever seen a race that includes age grading in its results?

If you are new to running and aren’t familiar with age grading, you may be wondering what the heck is that?

Age grading is used to level the playing field. Now, don’t get me wrong, age grading is not used to figure out the results of a race.

Whoever physically comes in number one is number one and so on.

What age grade does is take into consideration your age, and then world class runners at that age, and some other “mathy” things and gives you a race time that is “age graded”.

This age graded time allows you to compare your performance at your age against everyone else no matter their age or gender.

I liken age grading to a running track. If you’ve seen races, you see that the runners are staggered based on the distance that each ring is unequal to that of the innermost track (which is 400 meters, FYI).

The staggering allows each runner to have an equal shot at performance.

Age grading is kind of like that. It allows all the competitors to have a starting point of comparison regardless of age and gender.

For those of us who are older, this is a benefit. It calculates your race and gives you a time based on the formula, which for a lot of us is faster than we actually ran the race.

Age Grade Example

An example from me is of a Buffalo Marathon that I ran in 2019.

You can see the results:

I finished in 4:09:33 and the race lists my age grade at 3:40:49. The age grade percentage is 61%.

According to the age grade chart, an age grade between 60-69% means you are pretty competetive on the local front…which would be compared to women my age in the Buffalo area.

Age Grade Calculator

If you are in a race that doesn’t show the age graded time, you can use a calculator to figure that out.

One that comes recommended because they update it regularly, is the one from Runners World. A note- I am a member of the Runners World site, so I have access to everything on there and I am automatically signed in. So if you come up against a paywall through that link, I apologize!

You can go to this one from Run Bundle, if that is the case.

How to Use Age Grade for a Boost

(Especially if you are older)

One way to use your age grade is if you have been running for a long time.

Say in high school, you were able to run an 18 minute 5k.

Most of us in our 50’s are probably not going to do that, although there are some of us out there!

But looking at our age graded time can show us that we may not be as far off from “the good old days”.

We can also use age grading to see how we compare with those that came in first or second for our gender overall, in a more level playing field kind of way.

The last 5k I ran, I came in first for my age group, but 5th overall female.

If I plug the information in for the women that beat me, my PERCENTAGES are higher than the ones who came in first or second.

Also, based on age grade time, if the race results had been age graded (which they never are, just so you know) I would have come in second overall female.

This is in large part due to the fact that the women who beat me were a lot younger, and age grading is definintyely beneficial to those of us who are older because of the formula.

It is a fun metric to look at to measure your performance and see how strong you were, even if you aren’t the one on the podium.

So the numbers can be a good boost of ego for you, if nothing else. That being said, I don’t normally plug in everyone’s numbers!

How to Use Age Grade for Goal Setting

Using the example of an 18 minute 5K (which, btw, was never me…I didn’t start running until I was 39 so I have no “good old days”, lol), someone could look at their age graded time now.

I am fairly certain I will not be able to train myself to an actual 18 minute 5k, but my current fastest 5k race gives me an age graded time of 21:07, and a percentage of 70.

My goal could be to get to an AGE GRADED time of 18 minutes, or train myself to get in the 80th percentile.

I mentioned earlier that my Buffalo Marathon performance showed that I was in the 60’s percentage wise.

I could use that information to formulate a goal to get in the 70th percentile on my next marathon (Flying Pig in May, woohoo!).

If you rank in the 70’s, you are most likely a good racer regionally…a greater area surrounding where you live. So for me, that would probably be comparing the Buffalo, Rochester, Erie, PA marathons and my time against other women my age.

I can go to a calculator at runbundle.com and enter my age, gender and percentage and this calculator will tell you what times you need for each distance to go up a level. This is a different calculator than the one that computes your actual age grade.

Plugging in my 2019 marathon numbers, I could set a goal of running the marathon in 3:47:13, which would up my percentage into the 70th. Which would be a goal for NEXT marathon season. Since I haven’t run a marathon since 2019, my marathon level running fitness is way down, let me tell you! Training has been a BEAR!!

Seeing Where I Need Work

An interesting observation for me, was landing in a higher percentile for the 5K instead of the marathon.

Since I train at longer distances and for 1 or 2 marathons a year, I expected I would be in a higher percentage for the marathon.

What I can take away from those numbers is that I need to tweak my training to try and up my endurance at a faster pace. That is something that won’t happen in one training cycle, but something that I can be aware of going forward.

It also tells me that maybe I could get really good at 5 or 10K’s in the future, if I didn’t want to race marathons down the road.

If you have done any racing, go do some of your own research on your age grades. Find out what you may need to work on, and formulate some goals for yourself.

You can go to Athlinks and if you race, you will be able to claim your races and see your stats for all of them in one place.