30 Year Performance Review

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In 30 years, I’ve run over 200 races in our Coldwell Banker Elite Grand Prix. I ran the first 124 races in the series and then timed series races for 12 years. For the past four years, I completed all the series races. While timing, I finished about 40 races.

Since the Coldwell Banker Elite Grand Prix has common races each year, I decided to look at my results for aging analysis. Here is my data and information on the average male race finisher by year,

The age by year is as of August 1. For all males, that is the average age of race finishers using the August 1 age rather than age on race day. I’ve consistently got older. The average male is slightly older.

My race pace has slowed by more than one percent per year. The most significant impact was during my early 60s with inconsistent shorter races. The surprise is the average male’s speed loss, slowing 2 minutes per mile (26%) while only aging five years. The average race distance increase could have caused some of the rise. As the years progressed, the series added 10-mile and half-marathon races.

Looking at Average Grand Prix Points per race, as the number of male finishers per race increased, this number decreased. I’m happy to see I scored more than average until recent years.

We have a formula that converts all race times to an equivalent 5km time. Though imperfect, the factors used are based on our participants in each race’s typical environment, including weather and hills. All 5km races have a factor of 1.0. Longer races have a factor above 1.0, divided into a finish time to get the 5km equivalency.

As expected, my 5km equivalents have increased. Using the 1% per year rule, my 5km time should be 28:54. Not bad.

Not expected, the average male 5km times have increased by almost 6 1/2 minutes. That’s a big slowdown without significant aging.

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