Age Grading- Do we need it?

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them, I didn’t mean to say what I said, but it was too late - they’d already landed with a big fat thud!

I’d secured my eldest daughter a much sought after 10km spot in an upcoming race in September, the race starts and finishes in our local zoo. Now when I say I love the zoo, I really do mean I LOVE the zoo; to the extent that the grandkids and I treat our local zoo like our back garden, visiting on a Friday afternoon as often as we can.

To say I was pleased with myself for getting her a number for this sold-out event was an understatement. If you’d seen inside my head, I was already imagining us running it together, laughing as we passed the penguins, knowing that the whole family would be there supporting us. Honestly, I’d really put a lot of effort into this imaginative scenario, which even included me crossing the finish line with a grandchild in each arm! I know, it’s only a local 10km, I wasn’t imagining I’d won Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, but you get the idea that I was super excited.

This imaginative scenario was probably born out of the realisation that I’d underestimated one of the down sides of running for over 25 years, in the main that for my family, me running in a race is the norm, my little people are no longer little and are “so over” waiting excitedly on the sidelines, shouting and cheering me on as I run past.

Yes, those days are long gone! And as wonderful as it is to watch generations of families supporting other runners whilst I still take part in races, sometimes, like being lonely in a room full of people, when you run a race on your own, without anyone supporting you*, witnessing those special moments with other families can feel a bit isolating (*apart from special half marathons and marathons – I haven’t forgotten my dad and husband!).

To put this more into context, my daughter started running last year, just before she got pregnant; she’s now dipping her toe back into running, so of course, she’s completely unaware of my imaginative dream, and obviously without the back story, (plus she’s 9 weeks post partume) my words didn’t land quite as they were meant to as I nonchalantly said to her, “I’ll run the 10km with you if you want” but I didn’t leave it there did I, I had to continue…. “I’ll do my 10k race on the Saturday and run with you on the Sunday”.

For those of you who have either said something similar or had something similar said to you, you know that what I said was a really twatish thing to say, (and please feel free to comment below if you’ve said anything similar or been on the receiving end of such a comment).

In my defence, I still do love “racing” races, I love the process of following a plan and executing it on race day, so in my head, all my summer training wouldn’t be going to waste because I’d seen there’s a nice 10km on the Saturday before the zoo race on the Sunday.

Anyway, as you can imagine, my daughter didn’t let me get away with my twatish comment…

“Oh” she said, “you’ll run with me, will you?” She turned, looked me straight in the eye and continued, her tone dripping with sarcasm “So you think you’ll be able to keep up with me, do you? What, you’ll run “your race” on Saturday and then “run” with me”.

Safe to say she wasn’t impressed and wouldn’t let it lie.

I didn’t intend to imply that running with her would be to assume she was slower than me and that for me, running side by side with her would be an easy chit chat run where I hardly got out of breath. But of course, let’s be honest, that’s exactly what I meant wasn’t it? Underneath it all, when runners say that to each other, that’s what they mean.

It got worse, as my daughter’s partner chipped in, he said “Your mum runs marathons, she’ll easy be able to run 2 x 10kms back-to-back”

“Mum’s not a sprinter” she said. And there were her words, probably not intended (as weren’t mine) to sting, but they did a bit as I found myself, stumbling over my words, justifying that I was in fact a sprinter, trying to recall my best 10km time - they both looked at me, “well how old were you when you ran that time?”

I stopped myself from boring them with age grading percentages “just because I’m older and my times might, on paper, seem to show I’m slowing down……” but I could see they’d lost interest.

Why was it so important to me to let them know that I wasn’t past it? They couldn’t care less about this clever calculation known as age grading percentages which adjusts your race times for your age and gender, for example I can compare my race times as a 56-year-old, to previous race times 20 years ago and if the resulting % is the same or higher bracket (see below) than it used to be, then you can convince yourself, (and others), that you’ve still got “it”!

Age Grade Calculator -it works by giving you a percentage of how your time compares to the world best time in age and gender;

Local class (60%+)
“You’re running better than most people your age in your town or club.”

Regional class (70%+)
“You’d probably place near the top in county or regional events.”

National class (80%+)
“You could compete at a high level in UK-wide age group races.”

World class (90%+)
“You’re up there with the best in the world for your age group.”

I must admit that over the years I have used age grading to gauge how I’m doing, especially for big races, but after this conversation, I’m starting to think that it’s just another comparison and pressure dynamic that potentially has lost its audience and impact to the new generations of runners; and I think they might be onto something.

Gen Z and Millennials run for different reasons, personal growth, community vibe and mental health, not leaderboards or box ticking exercises and run group community chats are filled with interesting comments about how rubbish the age grading system is…

“Age grading is just another way to appease OLD people and rub their ego… A race is a race… you get old and slow down, and that’s that.”

"It seems impossible to deny age grading is just another way to placate OLD people."

Wow! Are they right? Is comparing your younger running self to where you are now just another way to convince yourself that you’re not slowing down? When it looks like no one really cares, especially the Zer’s and Millennials.

And of course, age grading assumes you were in your peak in your 20s, when the reality is, well it certainly was for me, most Gen X’s in our 20s were still dancing till dawn and proudly smoking 20 Marlboro a day, so for us outliers, the age grading system undervalues what we have achieved in our 40s, 50s and beyond.

Are we frightened of slowing down? Or do we not know how to train as we age, what we used to be able to get with in our 20s & 30s, we simply can’t get away with as even the 40s seem like a distant memory. There doesn’t seem to be any room for any mistakes, we must look after the WHOLE body, not just the running part.

Richard Askwith addresses’ some of these issues in his book “The Race Against Time” he writes “If I’d known I’d still be running at this stage of my life, I’d have taken better care of myself” He points out “we need to be patient, even as we get older, there are no giant gains, and no short cuts, training is incremental” he continues, using an analogy of how changes in the healing process compare to our younger and older selves - “if you want to know how incremental (training is as you age), think about when you get a cut on your hand. When you were a kid, it would be gone in a couple of days. But now as we age, sometimes you look at your hand, and you think: Oh, man, I remember that. I did that a month and a half ago…”

The same can be said of training, you get better when your body rests and adapts, not in the actual running session, it’s the rest days afterwards where the goodness lies. But, unlike the generations literally chasing up the rear, we’ve been told to run faster, harder, don’t fuel, don’t do weights….

Back to my daughter, she’ll whip my ass soon enough, and I have no doubt she’ll be a great runner, not only because she has the same dogmatic and tenacious traits that I have (apparently that’s a compliment) or that she has a mum who’s a running coach (I mean what do I know) but mainly because she’s started strength training a lot sooner that a lot of us Gen Xers.

Ps I’ve created a new course - it’s called Strong, Safe & Steady and it’s all about building confidence, consistency, and the mindset you need for real-life running — not just ticking off a training plan.

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