Posted by Monetta Roberts on September 13, 2007 at 19:36:03:
In Reply to: Age-Graded Tables for Corporate Cup posted by Leif Irgens on September 13, 2007 at 14:39:48:
From the Personal Desk of L. Irgens:
I was wondering which age graded tables you are using to calculate the corporate cup awards. As I get older, I can no longer use time as an indicator of what is or is not a good race (unless FBM is there, then a good race is beating him and a bad race is getting beaten) . . . anyway, I've been thinking about tracking some of my age graded results but I noticed that what I calculated for myself and for my wife at the Hurricane run (using the tables on the Pine Belt Pacers website) doesn't match what my team captain showed me for the Corporate Cup results.
Obviously, for the Corporate Cup results, all that matters is that you use the same tables for everybody but if I'm going to track age-graded conversions for myself, I want to be using the most up-do-date tables
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And my thoughtful reply:
Dear Leif:
You directed your query at Will and Leon, but since you asked publicly, I'd like to add my two cents too; ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!
Uh oh, better make that three cents' worth.
Despite your professed inability to trust actual race times as an indicator of performance, I'd first suggest that even in your sudden-onset, post-40 condition, you are still a bit young to be relying on age-graded tables. Why so? I'm glad you asked! Because there is a whole sub-class of people out that who are just ruining it for the rest of us, and without even the slightest regard for what this does to us and our delusions about aging! (Yes, I consider it quite rude!)
Not to name names (would *I* do that??) but folks like David Jeffrey, Rick Walton, Bill Brady, Timmy Jernigan, Roy Duncan, Jimmy Matthews, and even Will Wright and Leon Mattics themselves (plus a whole lot more) are completely blowing the whole age-graded curve for the rest of us. You'll find people from this bad crowd in just about every race town, unfortunately. So how can you (we) justify age-grading ourselves when these folks are still out there kicking booties and taking names, straight up?
My only other suggestion is that if you really want one of the more accurate tables for your calculations, I find that the dinner table works real well: The longer I'm there, the slower my race times. And that's not HALF as funny as it could be, on account of how thin and spindly you are!
Yeah, Ok,
Mo