Age-Related Times and new PBs
No matter how good or how poor you are, runners are a competitive bunch. We all set ourselves goals. One of the most fundamental of these is the Personal Best. Unfortunately, as we progress through our running career, time catches up with us and no matter how hard we train the PB's disappear into the dim distant past, never to be attained again. I will add age-related performance into the results listings (if I know your age in years!) to give the more mature members something attainable to strive for. Although this measure is secondary to a PB it is by no means a second rate achievement, displaying that you are effectively holding back the passage of time and maintaining a standard.
Comparing Rabbits and Tigers
We are all members of the same club, consisting of many active members. An ever increasing number of members have, this year, entered one or more events over our selected range of Grand Prix distances.
Have you ever wondered how your performances, not just your times, compare with other club members or with your performances in the past?
One way of gaining an insight into the level of your performance is by the use of age-related tables. Basically, these are a set of tables giving times for a range of distances, categorised by age and sex, which are considered to be of equal merit. By comparing your time for a given distance for your age and sex it is possible to calculate a performance level.
I thnk it is interesting to publish some of these figures so that you can compare your performances with other club members. There are some interesting comparisons and you will be able to see how, hopefully, you improve from one year to the next.
This is not a definitive indicator of performance, and is in no way meant to belittle the people towards the lower end of the ratings. Running is very much a personal thing and is a battle against yourself as much as others and many of us strive to merely maintain our performance levels. It is hoped that this measure will give you a means of assessing your success or failure in this struggle.