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Age Grading Made Simple
In the deep dark days beyond recall,
when Phidippides was running in the 5th century BC, the laurels were
always to the swiftest. It remained that
way for centuries. Indeed there was only
one category of runners and that was runners (athletes, to purists),
irrespective of age. There was no
masters category. Indeed just living to
age 40 was an achievement in those days.
Phidippides was therefore doubly remarkable because he was a Master in
age when he did the 280 mile round trip from Marathon to Sparta
and the 40 KM run from Marathon to Athens.
It was not until 15 centuries later
in 1025 that Avicenna (Abu Ali Sina), Persian physicist recommended exercise to
keep older patients healthy and broke a person’s lifespan into 4 categories –
growth, prime, elderly and decrepit.
Approximately 600 years later Shakespeare in his play “As You Like It”,
had Jacques soliloquizing about the seven ages of man. One wonders why it took life so long to
imitate art. The leaders in our sport
can take solace in the fact that the study of effects of aging across a broad
spectrum of activities did even not have a name until 1904 when Mechnikov
coined the term gerontology.
As the twentieth century wore on,
age spans were expanding and more older runners were entering our sport. It became obvious that these older runners
could not compete on the basis of raw times with their younger brethren, which
led to the first breakthrough which was an official Masters category beginning
with athletes, typically, age 40 and older.
Alas, this was only a temporary solution because our leaders found that
60 and 70 year olds could not compete for prizes with the 40 and 50 year olds. Thus they formed 10 year age groups, but we
had a similar problem with 59 year olds having to compete with 50 year
olds. Five year age groups were
established, but with the same problem persisting. What was needed was a measuring technique
that would level the playing field amongst all runners – old and young alike.
In 1989, World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA) developed a set of
tables in one year age increments for all standard events under their purview. These tables allow a runner to have her/his
raw time be converted to an equivalent
open time through using what is known as age factors. If races, indeed, awarded all/most of their
awards on the basis of age graded times it would be the most level playing
field of all, irrespective of whether the athlete is 16 or 26 or 60. The more common use of these tables involves
what are called age standards and that allows the athlete to determine her/his
performance level based upon a percentile derived.
The percentile classifications are:
100% - Approximate World Record
Level
Over 90% - World Class Level
Over 80% - National Class Level
Over 70% - Regional Class Level
The most current set of these tables
is located at the USATF website at www.usatf.org/groups/eventdirectors/agegradingtables
. If the timing company for your race
does not calculate your age grades, you can do your own calculations or there
are age grade calculators available. Use
of these percentiles allows every runner to compare their performances with every
other runner, irrespective of age and with themselves as they go through their
own journey of aging.
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EXPLOITING AGE GRADING
Three years ago
this month the article I wrote was called “Age Grading Made Simple” in order to
convince people in the industry to more widely use it. That has happened with those responsible for
that wider use crediting age grading with attracting more and new people to the
sport. Credit for that happening should
not be given to the article, but, simply giving innovative race administration
better tools has proven efficacious since the beginning of our industry. Let’s recap and look at some of the examples of innovative use of age grading.
The WMA (nee
WAVA) age grading standards are 25 years old this year. They have gone through several “ fine
tunings” regarding modifying the
standards slightly, but, at least in Road Running, the fine tunings are done
and we have a finished product. What is
the product?? At its simplest, it is a
way of handicapping athletes to compensate for the aging process and at its
most complex it is a model containing world-wide empiric data. It can translate your result either into its
equivalent time for an Open athlete or it can translate it into a
percentile. It is most often used as a
percentile, since most people can relate excellence to a percentile. Typically the percentiles are stated thusly:
100% - Approximate
World Record Level
Over
90% - World Class Level
Over
80% - National Class Level
Over
70% - Regional Class Level
One of the
leaders in innovative use of these standards is the Masters Long Distance
Running Committee of USATF. In our
championship guidelines we require more award money be awarded for age grading
than for overall winners. Why?? Simply because the overall prize winners are
almost always going to be 40 year olds and we want to encourage runners over 40
of all ages to participate and we want to give them as level a playing field as
possible and the age grading tables allow us to do that. As a case in point at our 2012 10K
Championship held in Ann Arbor, MI, Chris Kennedy, 57, who finished 42nd
overall was first in age grade; second in age grade was Kevin Miller, 50, who
was 4th overall; third went to Malcolm Campbell, 41, who was first
overall; fourth was Edie Stevenson , 62, who was 67th overall and
fifth was Doug Goodhue, 70, who was 50th
overall. It has been recommended that
all Association Championships and Grand Prixs follow a similar pattern and
award the most prestigious awards to age grade winners since that approach
reaches a more diverse set of age groups, which the Michigan results illustrate.
Another innovative approach that highlights age
grading is done in the Pacific Association.
They keep a current list of the top 50 age graded performers and
performances on their website and update it weekly. It can be seen at http://www.pausatf.org/data/2014/RRPerformances2014.htm#PERFORMANCES
. It both highlights the performers and
performances, on a dynamic basis, and represents a challenge to be listed. Does your Association even know who your top
age graded performers are? Do your
athletes even know their age grade performance level? It has been suggested that Associations hold
a dedicated Age Graded Championship to determine, annually, who are the best
age grade performers, with appropriate awards.
Still another
approach which illustrates the versatility of age grading, has one club
competing in several championship races with other clubs, with the winner being
determined by the top 10 age graded performances for each team. Something that is frequently overlooked is
that age grading, although used extensively by Masters, also contains standards
for all ages, including Open. Thus in
competitions of these types, the top 10 may consist of a mix of gender and
ages, to include Youth, Open and Masters.
If you are looking to expand your base of athletes who can score in
events such as these, age grading is an unrivalled vehicle for that purpose.
If your club or
Association is doing something innovative, please let me know at dmlein@earthlink.net so that we can inform others as to how this
very versatile tool can be used to reach a broader audience and bring in more
members.
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