ProAthletics: correction for age, gender & distance of
athletics
distance performances
Your level according to ProAthletics
Ranking of world records according to ProAthletics
Your level according to ProAthletics
Ranking of world records according to ProAthletics
We have developed a method of weighing performance of "run-for-fun"
athletes in which we correct for distance, gender, and age.
This calculation method, called "ProAthletics", is optimized on
approximately 1000 individual races
of 80 athletes running at Nijmegen Athletics, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands.
Most athletes participating were veteran athletes. The average age of
the participants is approx. 46 years (range 24 - 69).
Unlike most other age-grading and correction methods (see e.g. age-grading),
our method is primarily developed for amateurs.
We have defined a level of a talented athlete who trains 3 times per
week,
and set the level on 100, the so-called "norm-level".
Professionals run about 25-30% faster than this "norm-level", so world
records will on average score about 70
with ProAthletics. The lower the score in ProAthletics, the better!
Race time predictor and ProAthletics scores
With up to 3 recent race times and distances, this tool will calculate
the predicted finish time and the ProAthletics score.
If you only want to calculate the ProAthletics score of your most
recent race, enter in row "Race 1", age, distance and recent
time. Next enter at "Predicted time" only age and (the same!) distance.
The ProAthletics scores are tabulated.
- Age at race
- Distance. Use decimal separator (e.g. 42.2 for marathon)
- Time in hr:min:sec
- Man/Woman for correct formulas
Ranking of world records according to ProAthletics
Professionals run about 30% faster than this "norm-level", so world
records will score on average about 70
with ProAthletics.
On the Internet you can find at IAAF
and WMA
lists of
outdoor athletics world records.
Although our calculation is developed for non-professionals, with not
unlimited time to train, it is still
nice to have a look at the scores of professionals according to
ProAthletics.
You may conclude that world records of IAAF score on average about 70,
while veteran athletes score
according to ProAthletics about 73. It is tempting to conclude
that
the
sharper world records of IAAF, even after correction for age, can be
explained by the fact that
IAAF records are run by 100% professionals.
But of course the competition is also important; Olympic distances
score very well.
If you would like to break a world record, you better select a world
record with a relative high score (>75) according ProAthletics.
We have ranked all world records independent of age, gender and
distance at Download (ranking of all
world
records).
In the "overall" ranking of all world records according to
ProAthletics, the
marathon of
Andrés Espinosa (men 40+) with a marathon in 2:08:46 is
considered to be
the best performance. However, it is important to realize that
ProAthletics
gives a bonus for the
long distance (starting > 21.1 km), being 5% at 42.2 km,
because amateurs have relatively limited time to train. And training
time is very important for the longer distance...
If we ignore the marathon records, we find the 10000 m of Kenenisa
Bekele (26:17.53) at the top of the list.
The records of Sammy Kamau (58:33) on the half marathon and Kenenisa
Bekele on the 5000 m (12:37.35) score also very
low and are consequently,
according to ProAthletics, very sharp. In the ranking of the world
records
we find also an unbelievably fast records of
Yekatarina Podkopayeva of Russia (as 45+, 4:05.44 on the 1500 m).
note: for completeness, the fastes times from local 15 km track
race (Zevenheuvelenloop:
7-hills) are also filled in above mentioned
download.
Last update December 2008
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