Those of you familiar with age grading may know that the age-grading tables for road races were significantly updated in 2015. Unfortunately, there has never been an age-grade table for the road mile; we have always had to use the track tables for the mile. This creates two problems. The whole concept of age grading is to allow the comparison of performances by runners of different ages and of different distances. When the age-grade table for one of those distances contains unrealistic and out of date numbers – the track tables have not been updated since 2005 – it produces age grades that have little relationship to those of other distances. Because age grading is such an important factor in Masters LDR, the USATF Masters LDR Committee has been looking for a table for of road mile that was much more in line with the tables for other road events. The schedule for Pacific Association’s Road Grand Prix Short Series provided a perfect opportunity to compare 5K and 1 Mile performances on fast courses that were only 8 day apart. Using the data from the Morgan Hill Freedom Fest 5K and the Marin Miracle Mile along with Jack Daniels VO2 Dot Max data, I was able to construct a mile road table using Alan Jones, up-to-date factors from the road 5K along with much more realistic Open Standard times to produce a table for the road mile that is much more in line with Alan’s 2015 tables for the longer road distances. Earlier this week I submitted my work to Alan for evaluation, and yesterday he approved my road mile table. Don Lein, the USATF Masters LDR Committee Chair also approved the table, so now it is part of the official 2015 road age-grading tables.
I have used this new table for age grading the Marin Miracle Mile.
Tom Bernhard