Yes, Dave... Of course you did. My apologies...
I'M UPDATING MY LOG NOW.
Dave
Can someone explain in small words, what the age equivalent is good for? Yeah, so if I had been running at age 30, I could have done a HM in 1:39. So?
So you can compare yourself to the poor 30 year old sucker who can't run a 1:39 HM, like you most probably would have at his/her age. Where is your competitive spirit? Races are all about comparing yourself to others. At least to me, they are.
PRs: Boston Marathon, 3:27, April 15th 2013
Cornwall Half-Marathon, 1:35, April 27th 2013
18 marathons, 18 BQs since 2010
Indeed. Just something to help make us old folks feel better about ourselves. Presumably some calculation like this is used for setting the Boston qualifying standards, so there's that. There must be other things, but I don't know what they are.
The fact that there are huge physiological differences between men and women, maybe?
What is this comment in response to?
This calculator also makes comparisons between women and men and their results, at any age. Very useful.
Are we there, yet?
Although it may be fun to see what your equivalent is at a different age, I find it more useful in comparing races at different distances. Being based more on empirical results rather than a formula, I think it is also more accurate. It is also useful in comparing gender results. We know happylily is fast for her age and gender, but just how fast is the male equivalent? Her PR at the 2013 Boston marathon is the equivalent of a 3:02:15 for a man her age. It is also the equivalent of a 2:47:38 for a man in the open AG or 3:01:43 for a woman in the open AG.
For those of us who have been running long enough that age is a factor in race times, it tells me whether I'm running better or worse than I was 5 or 10 or 50 years ago.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Well of course I understand the concept. For me I just consider it not particularly useful (other than the one thing I mentioned), but rather just somewhat interesting.
MTA: 3:16 marathon - interesting!
race obsessed
Age grade - what's the use?
as WC stated you can compare your current running to running years back.
Also - rare, but there are race events that only have overall placement.
Gender and age are ignored in placement, instead place is determined solely by Age-grade.
There is a 64 yo lady in our training group that would finish a solid mid pack but age grading would not just beat me but slaughter everyone in the group. Last I checked she was in or ear 90th percentile.
As a comparison I run 75-79.9 percentile depending on distance.
Well of course I understand the concept. For me I just consider it not particularly useful (other than the one thing I mentioned), but rather just somewhat interesting. MTA: 3:16 marathon - interesting!
It's useful to me in the sense that within our group of runners, which is made up of men and women of different ages, it tells me if my efforts in training and racing are acceptable or not. If I were at the bottom, I would want to know why. There are many factors other than age and gender. I would wonder if my weight is working against me, if my mileage is too low, if my pain threshold is not high enough, etc... You can only know that you have to make changes to your training when you compare yourself to others. And you can't always compare yourself to someone of your gender who is of the exact same age... So to me, this calculator is useful, not just a thing used for bragging.
No more marathons
George (wcrunner) and I are both old pharts, so we can use these calculators to tell us how close we are to racing at a time when we were setting real PR's and not just age related PRs. For instance, I ran a 22:03 5K last weekend. At age 64 that equates to a 17:07 for when I was in my prime. I compare that to my overall PR of 16:53 and I know I have some improvement to realistically expect.
Boston 2014 - a 33 year journey
Lordy, I hope there are tapes.
He's a leaker!
Look, maybe it's not useful to you but some of us use it to feel better about ourselves. Even though we know running the 'equivalent' of a sub-3 marathon isn't as impressive as actually running one.
Hip Redux
The part in bold is exactly why these calculators are useless in comparing to others, IMO. Too many factors, most of which are not age or sex.
And I would think comparing your results to your own prior results would be more meaningful than comparing to someone else.
The part in bold is exactly why these calculators are useless in comparing to others, IMO. Too many factors, most of which are not age or sex. And I would think comparing your results to your own prior results would be more meaningful than comparing to someone else.
Maybe you're right. But in a race, for me, it will always be about comparing myself to others. I use the ranking for that, but when comparing myself to others who have not done the same race, I have no choice but to use the calculator. As we can see here, some people choose to disregard those types of calculators and others choose to use them. I guess whatever is an advantage to us is what we choose to believe in.
Work in progress. If you have comments/suggestions about the classification of the links... feel free to share them. It might make sense to me too. Or not.