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Welcome to the Age-Grade-Tables wiki! Since 2004, the Age-Grade-Tables have been constructed by Alan Jones with lots of help from others.
For the tables up through 2015, data from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians (ARRS) was used. The AARS was created by Ken Young and maintained by him until his unfortunate death in early 2018.
In 1989 the National Masters News and the World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA) compiled a booklet, Masters Age-Graded Tables, of tables for grading athletic performances based on sex and age. These tables covered all standard track and field events plus standard long distance running events and race-walking events. They only covered ages 30 and above. These tables were compiled by a committee composed of Rodney Charnock, Peter Mundle, Charles Phillips, Gary Miller, Bob Fine, Rex Harvey, Phil Mulkey, Bob Stone, Mike Tymn, Christel Miller, Phil Raschker, and Al Sheahen.
In 1994 the tables were updated and were extended to ages 8 through 19 in Age-Graded Tables, National Masters News, P.O. Box 2372, Van Nuys, CA 91404.
In 2002 Alan did a race in which it seemed to him that the younger runners were not being treated fairly. He began, at that time, to create new tables. After some months he began to work with Rex Harvey and Chuck Phillips. See below. In early 2003 he endorsed Chuck's work and stopped working on his own. Then in late 2003 Rex Harvey took a close look at Chuck's tables and found some errors due to some fast performances that Chuck did not know about.
Alan worked closely with Rex Harvey through the spring of 2004. They developed new tables for track distance running and road races up to 200 km.
In 2019, Tom Bernhard assumed the task of compiling road running records.
For each distance, the single-age bests, in minutes, are plotted on the vertical axis with the ages on the horizontal axis. Then a curve is plotted on the same graph as the records, adjusting so that the curve is always below or on each record.
Here is an example for the 5 km men.
In 2002 Alan Jones set out to see if he could create tables that would treat youth runners' times more fairly. To be fair to the WAVA tables, when the youth tables were added in 1994, it was stated that they did not have as much data as they had for the masters and veteran age-groups and that the factors were to be considered only a first attempt. After looking at the single-age records and the 1994 WAVA tables, a curve was developed that consists of a flat section equal to one for open runners. This flat section is followed by a parabola and then a linear section for most of the masters range. This is followed by a parabola for the oldest runners. For the youth runners, the same approach is followed: a parabola, then a linear section, and finally a parabola as one goes to the younger ages. The equations are constructed so that the slope is continuous between the linear and quadratic sections. The following is the formula used to generate the factor where x is the age:
f = 1 - C(c - b)^2 - B(b - x) - A(a - x)^2 for x < a
f = 1 - C(c - b)^2 - B(b - x) for x >= a and x < b
f = 1 - C(c - x)^2 for x >= b and x < c
f = 1 for x >= c and x < d
f = 1 - D(x - d)^2 for x >= d and x < e
f = 1 - D(e - d)^2 - E(x - e) for x >= e and x < f
f = 1 - D(e - d)^2 - E(x - e) - F(x - f)^2 for x >= f
See figure below. Notice that there are 12 parameters: a, b, c, d, e, f, A, B, C, D, E, and F. However, we want to require that the slope is continuous from the quadratic sections to the linear sections. With this requirement, we can determine the value of two of these parameters in terms of the others reducing the number of independent variables to ten. These two additional equations are:
D = E/(2*(e - d))
C = B/(2*(c - b))
These ten parameters can be adjusted to fit the single age records. The factor (f) in the age-graded tables is always a number equal to or less than one. When doing age-grading, a person's time is multiplied by the factor f to obtain a time that this person should be able to run as an open athlete.
Below is a graph of the above expression along with its inverse. Note that the linear sections are linear only in the age-factor. When the inverse is plotted and what is proportional to time, the curve is always concave upwards as shown in the figure.
