How good is a 80% age-graded time compared to other runners of your age and the general public?

Fair enough, Coyote. Thanks.

And for the record, I do understand that I can come off a certain way on these threads even though I really don't mean to. I guess the old cliché is a cliché for a reason: you can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you cannot take the Brooklyn out of the boy.

The ARRS site is pretty cool - I didn't realize the founder had passed until someone recently brought that website up and I checked it out. I recognize that this may come off as self-satisfied in the way that I sometimes come off, but I actually would have cracked the list in the 15k (in large part because it is a relatively little raced distance) assuming no one else aged 46 had run faster in the last year. Then Kevin Castille raced the Boilermaker this month, so I think that might have knocked me off of the list in any event.

For what it's worth the WAVA tables were put together by Alan Jones (of Jones Counter fame) with the rational documented at this link: http://www.runscore.com/Alan/AgeGrade.html

The entries for the World Masters Track & Field Championships in September are up. Entrants are asked to post their seed time, which may or may not be realistic. However, it will give you and idea of what the standard for international competition is like.

Or rather the standard for people who can afford to travel to international competitions.

https://www.simplyregister.net/status/?e=113225

Two low 14:00s guys in the 45-49 age group, then a huge drop off to tow guys at 15:20-15:22 and then four guys at 15:30-15:45, then a couple of guys at just under 16:00.

I think this pretty much sums up the scene - there are some top talents out there like the guys who are seeded in the low 14:00 range, then there is a big drop off to guys who were probably sub-elite/second tier runners in their prime but who have risen up on the overall relative scene (guys like me) because most of the contemporary peers of the guys running in the low 14:00s have opted out of racing at a competitive level. Also indicative of how the scene works, Kevin Castille, the top American by far in that age group, and someone who would be right in the mix for the overall win in that age group, is not entered because (perhaps because there is no good reason for him to fly to Spain for a race in which he cannot make any money).

None of that is to discount Raddison's point which is that this is indicative of the talent distribution at any given time at the masters level. It is just to point out that it also affirms a lot of what we have discussed on this thread.