Tag: Club Champs

  • Age grading

    Age grading is something that may be familiar to parkrunners. Those percentages in the results that seek to level the playing field by comparing your time to the world record time for your age and gender. They give the example of four parkrunners: a 9 year old girl who finishes with a time of 29:15, a 23 year old male with a time of 21:30, a 65 year old man on 27:57, and a 75 year old woman with a time of 40:25. Although their finish times are different they all share exactly the same level of performance/fitness when age and sex are taken into account. To be specific, they all have exactly the same age-graded percentage of 60%.

    Our friends at Thirsk and Sowerby Harriers implement age grading in their own championships, and I thought it might be nice to do the same at GVS. For example, check out the results for Peak Forest, a →9.7km ↑247m fell race. The 1-2-3 using times alone was Gavin-Thomas-Lucas. But, taking ages and genders into account, the best performance was still Gavin, youthful Thomas falls right down the table, to be replaced by Moira.

    nametime#age grade#
    Gavin Peach44:45173.6%1
    Lucas Jones49:23371.3%2
    Moira Hunt69:431369.2%3
    Paul Barton51:50467.4%4
    Brian Holland62:541166.2%5
    Wayne Grant52:25566.1%6
    Thomas Penn47:26265.4%7
    Julia Carter61:591062.6%8
    Mary Jones65:031261.7%9
    Neil Colquhoun53:29660.6%10
    Anna Aspinall60:15759.0%11
    Liz Roberts61:18958.0%12
    Roy Whittle60:26857.8%13
    Elizabeth Gilmour78:151756.7%14
    Peter Rowe76:101555.9%15
    Paul Hunt69:441455.3%16
    Chris Tetley77:531652.4%17

    But how are these percentages calculated? Keep reading for the boring details.

    The Boring Details

    parkrun don’t publish the tables they use to calculate their age grading. What’s more, parkruns are all 5km. What’s even more, this was a gnarly fell race with some serious ascent. How can we get round these issues?

    How long (effectively) is Peak Forest fell run?

    Peak Forest is a 9.7km fell run, with 247m of ascent. Naismith’s rule of thumb would use the formula

    9.7 + ɑ ⨉ 0.247

    with ɑ=8 to say that this is an equivalent distance of 11.7km on the flat. But that formula would only apply to strictly uphill runs; in Peak Forest, there’s also 247m of descent. Hm. Up and down races, whilst not as hard as just up races, are harder than flat races. What’s more, gnarly fell races are much harder than their road equivalents. Somewhat arbitrarily, then, we’ll use the above formula with ɑ=8 (fell), ɑ=6 (trail) and ɑ=4 (road).

    But what’s the world record for an 11.7km race?

    parkrun don’t publish the tables they use to calculate age gradings. But World Masters Athletics do. For females and males, a variety of estimated world records are published for road racing distances from age 5 to 100, and 1 mile to 200 km.

    For example, Moira is [age redacted]. You can read across to see the estimated 11.3 km (7 mile!) world record is 46:22, and the 12 km world record is 49:38. WMA recommend extrapolating with

    u = (log 11.7 – log 11.3) / (log 12 – log 11.3) = 0.57

    46:22 ⨉(1-u) ⨉ + 49:38 x u = 48:13

    as the world record for someone of Moira’s age over 11.7km.

    And finally

    If we divide through Moira’s time into the world record time

    48:13 / 69:43 = 69.2%

    this is the age grading. It means that when the world-record holder finishes, Moira is 69% of the way around the course. Not bad!

  • Winter Half Tour of Bradwell

    Photos

    Results

    Robert Nock2:41:57
    Johnathan Cooper-Knock2:45:48
    James McGill3:35:11
    Paul Hunt3:50:37
    Ivan Whigham3:50:52
    Roy Whittle3:50:56
    Wayne Grant3:57:07
    Eddy Webb3:57:22
    Bec Day4:10:51
    Julia Carter4:26:35
    Chris Tetley4:27:51
    Stuart Keen4:34:54
    Claire Elsworth4:44:09
  • Hit The Trail

    Hit The Trail

    Chris Tetley writes:

    So it begins, the 2024 championship season, well apart from parkruns. Hit The Trail was the first full race of the 2024 season of championship races. Twelve of us turned out for this five-mile trail race on a chilly Sunday morning.

    The race runs along trails through the Reddish Vale country park just outside Stockport. They warned us it might be muddy in places, and it didn’t disappoint. They also mentioned the odd “puddle” or two and yes there were a couple of sections that had been flooded. Can I say the second one was particularly cold. Still, it washed the mud off our shoes, and we soon warmed up on the uphill finish.

    Results

    John Moore35:041st V60
    Wayne Grant36:16
    Brian Holland37:461st V65
    Roy Whittle40:06
    Mary Jones42:33
    Paul Hunt43:21
    Ita Kelly43:041st V60
    Christine Bowen46:30
    Claire Elsworth47:52
    Stuart Keen47:47
    Chris Tetley48:46
    Jane Keen57:24
    Emma Martin59:09

    Thanks to Jon-Paul Kearns for the pictures

  • Dambuster 10½

    Results

    Rob Nock1:13:14
    Kieran Smallbone1:22:12
    Shaun Hall1:31:10
    Christine Bowen1:46:42
    Chris Tetley1:50:07
    Shaun, Rob, Kieran, Chris, Chris
    Rob flying to another top ten finish
  • Meerbrook 15k

    Results

    Rob Nock1:02:57
    John Moore1:12:03
    Matt Biglin1:14:52
    Ita Kelly1:29:40
    Sean Adams1:30:51
    Christine Bowen1:34:10
    Julia Carter1:37:39
    Chris Tetley1:38:39
    Chris, Sean, Julia, Ita, Chris, Matt, Rob, John

  • Groovy Kinder Love

    Results

    Rob Nock2:56:11
    John Moore3:57:00
    Wayne Grant3:57:02
  • Peter’s Stroll

    Results

    1Roy Whittle10:49.00[course record]
    2Julia Carter10:50:00[women’s course record]
  • Teggs Nose

    Results

    Wayne Grant1:14:45
    Shaun Hall1:30:47
  • Three Peaks of Chinley

    Results

    Rob Nock1:15:51
    Chris Randall1:35:57
    Ivan Whigham1:42:18
    Shaun Hall1:44:46
    Rebecca Day1:44:48
    Roy Whittle1:51:21
    Ita Kelly1:51:44
    Matt Biglin1:51:45
    Chris Tetley1:59:47
    Christine Bowen2:00:32
    Lesley Sutton2:03:25
    Kirsty Pierce2:04:00
    Catriona Moore2:19:28
    John Moore2:19:39
    Karen Duddridge2:23:15
    Peter Fotheringham2:23:48
    Janet Smith2:24:18
  • Kentmere Horseshoe

    [+ Chris R]

    Results

    Chris Randall2:27:59
    Wayne Grant2:29:39
    Bec Day2:33:21
    John Moore2:36:36
    Shaun Hall3:05:28