I was cleaning out a desk drawer this week and came across a calculator. This was a different type of calculator in that it did calculations in minutes and seconds instead of whole numbers. It is used for a timing system in road races that use an “age graded system” or “performance level percentage” instead of the usual age group categories that most races use. Whether you use the age category system of the age graded system, the number of awards are close to the same. The age graded system compares every runner in the race to the world’s best time for his or her age. In the usual age group race runners are divided by age, either 10 or 5 years, categories. The top three runners in each group get an award. This is good except in some of the fast age groups a runner who runs a very good time but comes in fourth and doesn’t qualify for an award. Then in one of the slower age groups, a runner comes in near the end and probably 20 minutes after the runner who finished fourth in the age group. The slow runner goes home with an award because there were only three runners in that group.
The age graded system rewards the faster runners over the slower runners. Each runner is competing against every runner in the race, both men and women. Beating that one person is your age group no longer guarantees you a place or an award.
The race that I recall from looking over the results gave the following results. The first place runner was 32 years old and ran a 17:22 for a 5K. His time to compare was with the world record of 12:57. Dividing the record time by his actual time he had a performance level percentage of .7456. As it turned out he finished first. The change occurred with a 13 year old girl that ran a 19:43 time and finished in 7th place overall. With the age graded system she was competing against a world’s best time of 14:22 and gave her a percentage score of .7286. That was good for second place overall and ahead of the five runners who finished in front of her. Another example was a runner who was 55 years old. He ran a 21:17 time and was competing against a 15:21 time for his age. That time gave in a percentage of .7212 and moved him from 13th place to fourth. The runner that finished second overall was 37 years old with a time of 18:52 and came up with an age graded percentage of .7147 and ended up in fifth place. A runner that was 41 years old and finished in 4th place in the race with a 19:05 time had a percentage of .7240 and moved up to third place.
