Age and Gender Grading

AGE GRADING

The GLCR Series events are each age-graded. This means that final results are adjusted to control for age advantages. The value of the age-advantage is calculated using world records for the Mile on the track.

HOW DOES IT WORK
Imagine that a 5 year old was competing against a 40 year old in a road 5K. We understand that the 40 year old would have an advantage if all other factors were controlled. To date, the fastest a 5yo has run a 5K on the road is  24:08 (James Reed, November 2008, check it out here). That's pretty fast for a 5yo, but not as fast as the fastest 40yo at 13:40 (Bernard Lagat, 2015). In order for the competition to be fair, we must adjust the times based on their ages. Since both runners are the FASTEST of all of the runners their age, then they should tie (or else we must admit that age could be the reason why one has won and the other has lost).

We accomplish this by using the overall world record: 12:59 by Kipketer in 2000.
12:59 is 779 seconds. 779 will be the standard time for age-grade-adjustments for this example.
13:40 is 820 seconds. To convert this to the standard, we must multiply it by 0.95. (820 x .95 = 779). Therefore, the conversion for a 40 year old male would be .95.
24:08 for the 5 year old is 1448 seconds. To convert this to the standard we must multiply it by 0.538. (1448 x .538 = 779). Therefore, the conversion for a 5 year old male would be .538

GENDER GRADING

Gender grading works exactly like age grading, recognizing that the world record for a 40 year old woman is slower than the world record for a 40 year old man. In the above example, the age adjustment for a 40 year old man was .95. To convert the world record 40 year old women's time (15:47, or 947 seconds) to Kipketer's overall world record, we need to multiply it by .82. Therefore, the conversion for a 40 year old woman would be .82.