For many years the club has run the Summer Championship in on a 'first past the post basis'. Whilst a straight forward system it does not really give all members an equal chance of winning the Summer Championship. ‘First pass the post’ is generally biased towards younger male runners as no allowance is made for age or sex. From 2005 we made things more even by basing the scoring on ‘age-grading’.
The concept of age-grading results has been around for some time. It is a very simple approach that takes the actual time you take for a race and corrects it taking into account age and sex. What you end up with is an age-graded time that evens out effects of age and sex on the results. The correction factors have been calculated scientifically using results from large groups of runners.
Here’s an example of how it works. Consider three runners in a 5 km race. Let’s call them Andrew, John and Sue. All three are reasonable runners for their age and sex.
|
Name |
Actual Position |
Actual Time |
|
Andrew |
63 |
18:53 |
|
John |
79 |
19:37 |
|
Sue |
141 |
23:08 |
To calculate the age-graded time we need to know the runner’s age and sex.
|
Name |
Actual Position |
Actual Time |
Sex |
Age |
|
Andrew |
63 |
18:53 |
M |
33 |
|
John |
79 |
19:37 |
M |
50 |
|
Sue |
141 |
23:08 |
F |
55 |
When we look at the age-graded tables we see that Sue and John get an age-grading factor, or correction factor, that will reduce their actual time to a greater extent than Andrew’s.
|
Name |
Actual Position |
Actual Time |
Sex |
Age |
Age-graded factor |
|
Andrew |
63 |
18:53 |
M |
33 |
1.0000 |
|
John |
79 |
19:37 |
M |
50 |
0.8931 |
|
Sue |
141 |
23:08 |
F |
55 |
0.8324 |
This is good news as when the age-grading factor is applied to the actual time this will give a time that should make all three runners directly comparable.
|
Name |
Actual Position |
Actual Time |
Sex |
Age |
Age Graded Factor |
Age Graded Time |
|
|
|
(A) |
|
|
(B) |
(C) |
|
Andrew |
63 |
18:53 |
M |
33 |
1.0000 |
18:53 |
|
John |
79 |
19:37 |
M |
50 |
0.8931 |
17:31 |
|
Sue |
141 |
23:08 |
F |
55 |
0.8324 |
19:15 |
The formula is: ActualTime(A) x AgeGradedFactor(B) = AgeGradedTime(C)
These age-graded results put John ahead of Andrew with Sue close on their heels. A very different, but more reasonable, result than the actual race finish times.
For more information on age-grading have a look at the following websites:
http://free-ideas.org/~jess/track/grubb/agegroups.html
http://www.runraceresults.com/Results/AgeGrade.htm
For those not mathematically minded, don’t worry. All you have to do is enter and finish 6 or more of the Summer Championship races and run as fast as you can.
Click here to return to the main summer championship page