BRJ Annual Running Championship

An Age Grading Percentage – What is this?

You will have noticed that some BRJ race results that are published or shown on the club website include a column entitled “Age Graded %” and I thought I should explain what this means.

What is Age Grading? Briefly, it is the classification of an individual’s race finish time, based on a series of age and gender factors that is compared, as a percentage, to the World Record time for that distance. Age Graded percentages have been included within the club race results since December 2008 as they are used as the means of determining an individuals score in the Annual Running Senior and latterly the Junior Championships.

The “Age Grading” tables used as the basis for the BRJ Championships are those developed by the World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA). These tables are updated periodically when there have been significant changes in world record times. The version in use for the BRJ Running Championships is based on World Record times updated in 2015 using the “Howard Grubb” formula.

The “Age-Graded” percentage achievement levels you see in the results roughly equate, as follows: -

100% = The World Record time for that specific distance

over 90% = World Class

over 80% = National Class

over 70% = Regional Class

over 60% = Local Class

An example of “Age-Grading” in practice is taken from the BRJ results of the 2010 Brighton Marathon. Table A represents the order of the best 10 performances by BRJ members based entirely on their finish times alone.

Table A

Name / Finish Time
Steve Burton / 03:17:16
Stuart Hill / 03:24:21
Steve Dockerill / 03:25:31
John Wright / 03:27:42
Keith Douglas / 03:27:46
Alex Tindall / 03:32:37
Ryan Woolf / 03:40:59
Lucy Moore / 03:49:25
Paul Salmon / 03:50:49
Anita Girvan / 03:58:03

Table B below shows the same performances with an allowance for age and gender applied and you can see that Lucy Moore becomes the highest performing club athlete in that event.

Table B

Name / WAVA Percentage
Lucy Moore / 67.95%

Keith Douglas

/ 67.73%
Stuart Hill / 65.89%
Steve Dockerill / 64.95%
John Wright / 64.82%
Steve Burton / 63.39%
Alex Tindall / 58.75%
Anita Girvan / 58.75%
Ryan Woolf / 56.53%
Paul Salmon / 55.91%

How to use the “Howard Grubb WAVA 2015” Calculator

Locate the “Howard Grubb WAVA 2015” webpage

To Calculate your Age Graded Score from a Finish Time

Enter the Road Event type (or distance if not listed in the Drop-Down Menu)

Enter your Age

Enter your Gender

Enter your time in the “Time/Distance/Height” box (in 00:00:00 format)

Click on the “Age-Grade” button and the score displayed in the “Age-Performance” box

represents your Age Grading for that finish time

To Calculate your Projected Finish Time from a stated Age Graded Score

Enter the Road Event type (or distance if not listed in the Drop-Down Menu)

Enter your Age

Enter your Gender

Enter your desired Age Graded Percentage in the box entitled “Age-Performance%:” (in

00.00 format)

Click on the “Result” button and the time displayed in the “Time/Distance/Height” box

representsyour finishtime for that Age Graded score

For more information about the Running Championships, you can refer to the “Championships” tab on the homepage of the club website, or if you prefer, contact me directly.

Mike Gullis