Parkruns, Age grading and 5k in 30minutes - some nerdy stuff

[wilmacgh]

I've been digging around the web to try to make sense of the age grading in the parkrun results and also what this means for C25k implied 'target' of 5k in 30min. Here's the link the Parkrun site uses:

runningforfitness.org/faq/a...

I've used this to draw up a table of what 5k in 30min means

Age %men %women

20 43.4 49.3

30 43.1 49.3

40 45.5 51.0

50 49.2 55.9

60 53.4 63.8

70 58.8 74.2

This tells you what a time of 30min for 5k is as a % of the world record for the age group. Or put another way it's considerably more challenging for older women than young men. I think we knew that already! Point I take from this is although the Podcasts are labelled c25k it's running 30minutes which matters more.

[Stephanie-j Graduate]

Thanks for that! A bit intrigued by the fact that there's no % difference for women at 20 or 30 and only a small one between 30 and 40. I've been telling myself my faster friend had age on her side....these statistics prove me wrong! I'm not going to tell her though!!