Racing and getting older....

As we get older we slow down

I was pretty pleased with my 4:20 in Phoenix but wanted to know how my previous race times would hold up if I scaled them to my current age. One needs to have realistic expectations when training and I thought this data would help. As you may know I'm a data maven. I have all my garmin data on my own machine and have software (python) to crunch it eleven ways to Sunday 8)

Below, find a list of all my races of consequence: my10k PR race, 3 half marathons and mostly my 30 full marathons...in chronological order. At the bottom is my latest marathon. In red are the only other full marathons that are faster on Age Graded time than my latest race...

There are only 3 out of the 29 previous that were faster that this race on age graded time.
With non-AG time there are 8 races that are faster.

That makes me feel pretty good about my 4:20! Without crunching these data I'd be still feeling like a slacker ;) I kind of suspected my PR of 3:54 would be about 4:0x, but knowing it's a 4:06 is important to me.

Recently a 4:30 (10:15 pace) seemed pretty easy to knock out..now I know that corresponds (roughly) to my 'easy' 4:15 marathon pace back in '09. 

I find it extremely ANNOYING that Garmin and Strava have no features to support this kind of analysis. 

Strava lets you look at age graded results for segment rankings, but they mix women with men (REALLY suck for women) and they have 10 year age groups (!). When you are over 50 10 year groups does NOT cut it. The slowdown is steeper and it's just not fair to compare a 68 year old against a 61 year old.

The ageism we all have to deal with someday (if we are lucky) !

Race	Date	Miles	Time	AGTime	Pace	AGPace	BPM
sfh__08	2008-08-03	13.25	2:04:42	2:14:37	9:24	10:09	137.6
napa_09	2009-03-01	26.39	4:25:40	4:46:47	10:03	10:52	132.6
sch__09	2009-04-19	13.09	1:51:09	1:59:59	8:29	9:09	146.3
sfm__09	2009-07-26	26.80	4:15:28	4:33:15	9:31	10:11	137.7
svm__09	2009-10-25	26.51	4:15:28	4:33:15	9:38	10:18	138.0
sfm__10	2010-07-25	26.74	4:06:19	4:20:59	9:12	9:45	0.0
lbm__10	2010-10-17	26.46	4:25:09	4:40:57	10:01	10:37	138.6
surf_11	2011-02-06	26.37	4:22:04	4:37:41	9:56	10:31	132.9
lam__11	2011-03-20	26.50	4:12:29	4:27:32	9:31	10:05	133.2
cph__11	2011-05-22	26.77	4:10:42	4:23:09	9:21	9:49	139.9
cim__11	2011-12-04	26.38	3:56:35	4:08:20	8:58	9:24	135.9
eug__12	2012-04-29	26.36	3:54:59	4:06:39	8:54	9:21	140.9
berl_12	2012-09-30	26.70	4:27:23	4:38:01	10:00	10:24	137.8
sch__13	2013-04-07	13.08	1:48:34	1:52:53	8:18	8:37	144.4
tcm__13	2013-05-05	26.37	4:39:12	4:47:32	10:35	10:54	130.8
sfm__13	2013-06-16	26.81	5:09:47	5:19:02	11:33	11:53	126.2
trc__13	2013-06-17	26.52	5:10:48	5:20:04	11:43	12:04	126.6
pa10k13	2013-09-21	6.36	49:19	50:48	7:45	7:59	149.4
surf_14	2014-02-02	26.29	4:06:04	4:13:25	9:21	9:38	137.5
chic_14	2014-10-12	26.90	4:48:39	4:54:25	10:43	10:56	126.9
indi_14	2014-11-01	26.17	4:51:19	4:57:07	11:07	11:21	128.9
cim__14	2014-12-07	26.15	4:46:59	4:52:42	10:58	11:11	0.0
barc_15	2015-03-15	26.57	4:46:54	4:52:37	10:47	11:00	0.0
qarr_15	2015-12-20	26.15	4:41:35	4:44:22	10:46	10:52	129.2
clev_16	2016-05-15	26.32	4:30:00	4:30:00	10:15	10:15	126.7
sfm__16	2016-07-31	26.57	4:33:00	4:33:00	10:16	10:16	128.7
mcm__16	2016-10-30	26.74	4:42:04	4:42:04	10:33	10:33	121.5
ariz_16	2017-01-15	26.15	4:20:23	4:20:23	9:57	9:57	131.9