As a (sort of) runner for almost 40 years, I had always wondered if there was a way to compare my current performance to that of my 20 year old self. That is, I’ll never be as fit or as fast as I was in my 20s or 30s, but I wanted to know my current level of fitness relative to my younger self. There is.
There are several age grading calculators online that will adjust my current race time to what would have been my time from younger me. The formulas basically use race times across age groups to estimate the decline that occurs over the years. It is less than perfect, but it is fun for setting running goals. For example, I’d like to run a fast mile, but what time should I aim for? Using the age grading calculators I can work towards “matching” my best time from my youth. A 7:30 mile now is “equivalent” to a 6:29 mile from my youth, which was close to my best time.
I’ll save a deeper dive for a later post but the site for the World Masters Athletics has age grading tables, this site has some additional links on age grading, and this GitHub repo has the actual code for the calculations.