AgeGradeCalculations

17 flat at 46 is really good!

The age grading doesn’t predict performances; it just tells you how many % below the world record you are for a given distance and age group. Your 85% in the 5K means that you are 15% slower than the world record for 46 year olds.

There aren’t many runners who are equally strong at all races from the 5K to Marathon. If you tend to better at longer distances, then you should expect to have a marathon age grade performance higher than 85%. If you tend to do better in shorter races, then your Marathon age graded performance will likely be less than 85%.

Not sure what your question is. But, based on your recent times, you are a bit weak in your short game. I like to use the msstate age adjusted running table, and for your half, you are at 85.5 %, and you ran your 5k at 85%. So that means you have to work on your 5k some more, so that you can do it in16:34.

I'm a little confused so you ran 17-flat and that age grades to 1:14 & 2:37? The AG calculator is not suggesting that you can run sub-2:40.

17-flat & your 1:16 & 2:43 are your current times. I say train for sub-2:40. Why not? I didn't want the above to sound harsh. I'm just confused if you want to run a sub-2:40 or AG sub-2:40 & what marker says an open sub-2:40 is your current fitness.

17-flat for 5k projects to 1:18-flat & 2:43. So your half is stronger than your 5k. That bodes well for a sub-2:40 try. Maybe you can run 2:39 on strength.

Well, plug your 1:16:30 in to this. You are real close to hitting the 2:40 right now. The last little % is going to take increasing your running speed a tad more, IMO. Start adding some faster intervals in the mix at least every other week. Something like 6-8 X 800 @ interval pace suggested, 400 JR. If the rest seems too easy or too hard, just speed up or slow down your jog recovery.

Pretty well, if you get your 5K down to 16:40, you will have more wiggle room when it comes to the other PRs you are looking for.

85% shows you are pretty good for your age, but how to train is not really age related, you have to do the hard work to still reach your goals. And it gets harder when you are close to your limits. It's neat to look at the age grade and see what you could of ran back in the open class days. I find they are pretty close to what I was running back in the day.

https://runsmartproject.com/calculator/

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

This is the online calculator I used

https://runbundle.com/tools/age-grading-calculator

. If you scroll down you find the equivalent performances.

They are clearly different to the Daniels vDot equivalent times which I think one or two are quoting above.

But which is correct? Given AG calcs are taken from the fastest known time for that age, it may well be more accurate than the Daniels formula, which I don't believe makes any allowances for age...

Anyways' this is a very pro Daniels site in general, so I can see most would think my half is the strongest. I guess I just need to go out harder on a marathon and trust I have the conditioning to hold on at the end!

As someone says, no doubt a bit more speed would help, but everytime I run too near 'I' pace, I get hamstring issues so I generally avoid it.

Grubbs is much more consistent. Also a fairly good predictor as predictors go:

http://www.howardgrubb.co.uk/athletics/wmalookup06.html

The one you used gives me some strange calculations for example

male 63 800 2:28 Grubbs 87.3 vs 84.66 run bundle

the standards are way different 2:10 vs 2:05, the 2:10 is the correct std so there calculations is low for sure but wait.... run bundle predicts me running an 18:03 5000 track which bungle claims equates to a 19:20 5k crazy wrong where as Grubb calculater predicts an 18:27 track and 18:52 road 5 much more realistic . Seems like a nice web site but they need to work on their calculator heck Grubb gives you the standards if you want to make your own calculator in a spreadsheet.

btw there is a ton of interesting debate leading up the the stds Grubb uses.

Thanks for that link Charlie, I had lost track of it, and was using the one with that provides the 2020 factors here:http://howardgrubb.co.uk/athletics/mldrroad20.html

Charlie wrote:

btw there is a ton of interesting debate leading up the the stds Grubb uses.

Care to share more on the 'interesting debate', or provide a link to the debate?

Below is an interesting comment ripped from the following thread:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=10382609

I think I saw a comment somewhere(?) to the effect that the 'supershoes' :

(1) may be contributing to a reduction in the age-grade factors, and

(2) the reduction is greater in the longer distances (i.e., because one of the shoes' impact is to reduce leg fatigue, which has a greater effect as the distance is extended).

With the link (provided above), we can compare the age-grade performance between the 2010 and the updated 2020 factors to see if there actually is a trend for greater reduction as the distance extends. For example, considering 80% performance (i.e., minimum National Class) for a 60-yr Male, here are the factors for the 5km, Half-Marathon, and Marathon, and their respective VDOT's (from Daniels' calculator):

2010 80% Performance, 60-yr-old Male

Distance...............Time.....................VDOT

5k........................20:03......................49.7

Half-Mar............1:31:30.....................50.0

Marathon..........3:11:29.....................49.7

2020 80% Performance, 60-yr-old Male

Distance...............Time.....................VDOT

5k........................19:50......................50.3

Half-Mar............1:29:03.....................51.6

Marathon..........3:06:43.....................51.3

Looking at the above numbers, the trend is clear; in order to meet National Class in the Half or Full Marathon, according to the 2020 Age-Grade Factors, a significantly higher VDOT is required than was required with the 2010 factors (~51.5 in 2020 vs 50.0 in 2010). This is not the case for the 5km (50.3 in 2020 vs 49.7 in 2010).

If you aim for HM/M I would be very happy with the 5k capacity, but not train specifically at that pace much. Maybe just do a time trial or race for fun at 3k, 5k is enough. I would still incorporate some interval work at paces around 10k<->HM pace to be sure to run very comfortably faster than HM. It is beneficial for the threshold development. Also your HM time well above 1 hour says you depend some on fat metabolism which is the main Marathon ability. Now, training for the Marathon will give you this for free but I would do workouts or intervalls on paces between M and HM too to develop the fat metabolism at a relatively high speed. How you do this is not my speciality but somewhere in the transition btw the moderate and tempo pace, the fat metabolism is more or less reduced to nothing. The faster you can run without it being too reduced the better for HM/M

RunningOtaku wrote:

The age grading doesn’t predict performances; it just tells you how many % below the world record you are for a given distance and age group.

If you tend to better at longer distances, then you should expect to have a marathon age grade performance higher than 85%. If you tend to do better in shorter races, then your Marathon age graded performance will likely be less than 85%.

^^^This is the answer to the OP's original question as to 'what gives?'. And using the Daniels Calculator has nothing to do with whether one thinks this is a "pro-Daniels" site. Should they choose, one can instead use the McMillan Calculator if they are looking for 'equivalent performances'.

One can compare the AgeGrade Calculators with Daniels, as in my post above, to observe how they compare, but using the latter (or McMillan) makes more sense when evaluating 'equivalent performance'.