Every now and then we see someone in a race who seems to defy the normal process of aging. There’s always that one individual (usually in your age-group division) who runs away with the race and performs at levels we mortals only dream about, or vaguely remember from 15 or 20 years ago. Many of us that race occasionally (or more often) feel that our training justifies performances far faster than the finish line clock reveals. Sorry guys and girls, but it just goes with the territory. For the vast majority of us, as we get older, we get slower. But that doesn’t mean that our performances have deteriorated. In fact, in many cases we have improved! Welcome to the world of Age-Graded Performances (AGP). Many races report both actual finishing time, actual finishing place and age-graded pefomance (%, time or place). This allows us old (I mean, veteran) runners to feel less bad, or, perhaps, much better about our efforts. However, if one runs one of the many races that doesn’t report AGP, I recently came across a “do it yourself” tool on the Runners World site. For your psychological well-being, just go to:
www.runnersworld.com/cda/agegradingcalculator/
Believe me, you will really feel better. I tried it a few minutes ago. My 1:59:21 at the Silver Strand Half Marathon, miraculously transformed itself into a 1:33:24 (63.4% AGP). I feel better already 🙂
Happy Trails,
JRB