What is age grading in running?

Updated August 26, 2026 · By the Runked team

An age grade percentage next to a race result comes from a comparison against a published table. The tables, the bands people attach to the percentage, and the arithmetic behind both are below, along with a couple of real factors transcribed from the current edition so the numbers can be checked.

The percentage bands

The age-grade percentage itself doesn't come labeled. A separate convention, layered on top of the WMA tables by age-grading calculator sites, sorts scores into named tiers. The Runner's High's age-grading guide, compiled by S. Mark Courtney and sourced to the research done by the World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA), the predecessor body whose data fed the original tables, sets these cutoffs:

Source: The Runner's High, "Age Grading Explanation." The source doesn't name a tier below 60%. These bands are a naming convention applied on top of the WMA percentage; the tables themselves don't define them.

How the percentage is calculated

Per Alan Jones's own Age-Grade History document, "a score of 100% means that the runner has matched the open time for that age," and "a score of 50% means the runner took twice as long as a runner with a score of 100%." The open-class standard is the fastest time in the table; per the 2025 spreadsheets, the factor sits at exactly 1.0000 across a plateau that varies by event and sex: ages 19 to 29 for men's 5K, 22 to 35 for men's marathon, 19 to 26 for women's 5K, and 26 to 27 for women's marathon. Every other age gets an age factor between 0 and 1, and the age-graded time is the runner's actual time multiplied by that factor:

• Age-graded time = actual time × age factor
• Age grade % = (open-class standard ÷ age-graded time) × 100

The tables themselves have a history. Jones began building the current method in 2002 after scoring a race where he thought younger runners weren't graded fairly, then worked with Rex Harvey through 2004 on what became the WMA 2002 tables (completed for men in 2004, women in 2006). Road-running editions followed in 2010 (WMA/USATF, adjusted after the original female tables proved too soft for older runners at long distances), 2015 (approved that January, prompted by Denis Kimetto's 2:02:57 marathon world record resetting expectations at the top end), and 2020, with Tom Bernhard taking over the single-age best data after original collaborator Ken Young died in 2018. The current edition, the 2025 WMA/USATF Long Distance Running tables, was approved January 10, 2025 by the Masters Long Distance Running Council of USA Track & Field; the men's mile standard was revised again on July 25, 2025 after Bernhard found it was producing scores above 100%.

A few factors from the 2025 tables

These are transcribed directly from the published 2025 spreadsheets, MaleRoadStd2025.xlsx and FemaleRoadStd2025.xlsx (version 2025-07-27), for the 5K and marathon:

The open-class standards those factors are measured against: men's 5K 12:49 (769 seconds), men's marathon 2:00:35 (7,235 seconds); women's 5K 13:54 (834 seconds), women's marathon 2:09:56 (7,796 seconds). Source: 2025 WMA/USATF Long Distance Running road standards, Alan Jones and Tom Bernhard, version 2025-07-27.

Worked example

A 50-year-old man runs a 5K in 24:00, or 1,440 seconds.

1. Age factor for a 50-year-old man at 5K, 2025 tables: 0.8775.
2. Age-graded time = 1,440 × 0.8775 = 1,263.6 seconds, or 21:04 rounded to the nearest second.
3. Open-class 5K standard for men, same table: 769 seconds (12:49).
4. Age grade = 769 ÷ 1,263.6 × 100 = 60.9%.

60.9% clears the 60% cutoff for "local class" by the bands above, sitting just inside it. Half a minute slower, at 24:30 (1,470 seconds), the same math gives an age-graded time of 1,289.9 seconds and an age grade of 59.6%, which drops back under the cutoff. The bands are round numbers laid over a continuous percentage; a runner's actual score can sit right on either side of one.

How to find your own age grade

Four steps, same arithmetic as above:

1. Get your actual time in seconds, for a standard distance the tables cover (5K, 10K, half marathon, marathon; other distances are interpolated between those in the 2025 edition).
2. Look up your age factor for your age, sex and that distance in the current table, linked above, or in a calculator built on the same edition.
3. Multiply your actual time by the factor to get your age-graded time.
4. Divide the open-class standard for that distance and sex by your age-graded time, then multiply by 100.

Per Jones's Age-Grade History document, the results platform RunSignUp, which the document estimates covers 30 to 40% of U.S. race results, "adds the age-grade performance figure to all races run at one of the standard distances," so a race result may already carry this figure without any manual math. Where that figure already exists on a results page, it's worth checking which table edition produced it before comparing it to a number computed here, since editions have changed the underlying standards multiple times since 2004.

Common mistakes

• Treating the age-graded time and the age grade percentage as the same thing. They're two different outputs of the same calculation: one is a time (actual time × factor), the other is a percentage (open standard ÷ that time × 100). A results page can show either.
• Assuming the factor carries over between distances. As the table above shows, a 60-year-old man's factor is 0.8075 at 5K and 0.8143 at the marathon, close but not identical; using one distance's factor for another distance introduces error.
• Comparing scores computed on different table editions. The 2015, 2020 and 2025 editions used different single-age best data (Ken Young's research, then Tom Bernhard's), so the same finish time can grade slightly differently depending on which edition a calculator or race platform is running.

What to do next

Age grading is one way to put a raw time in context against a published, age-and-sex-adjusted standard. The good 5K time and good marathon time guides use a different, more informal set of age-and-sex bands built from race-result and parkrun data rather than the WMA tables, useful for a quicker read without doing the multiplication above. Runked's race time predictor takes a different approach again, estimating what you could run at another distance from your own training history rather than grading a finish time you've already run.

Compare to yourself, not to others. In Runked, the rank starts everyone at Bronze and only moves on your own runs. See how the running rank works.

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