You ran 44:30 for a 10K last Sunday. Good race. The runner who finished two minutes ahead of you is 38, and you're 59. Who actually ran better?
That question is what age-graded percentage is for. It turns a finish time, an age, and a sex into a single score: how close you ran to what's humanly possible at your age and distance. Higher is better.
The clock tells you who crossed the line first. The percentage tells you who ran the better race.
The formula
Three things go in: finish time, age on race day, and sex. It weighs all three against the world best for that exact combination. The result is one number. Higher is better. The road factors RaceRecords uses were approved in January 2025 by USATF's Masters Long Distance Running Council (Alan Jones, Age-Grade Tables, 2025).
It runs in two steps:
age_graded_time = actual_time × age_factor
percentage = open_class_standard ÷ age_graded_time × 100
The age factor is a multiplier from the tables. It discounts your time toward its open-class equivalent, how much an average athlete slows at your age over that distance. The open-class standard is the world best for your sex at the distance, no age adjustment.
A concrete example. A W55 runner finishes the Boston Marathon in 3:38:14. The age factor and open-class standard put her at 69.9%, a hair under local class. The same time at 25 would score far lower, because the W25 factor sits much closer to 1.
The clock didn't move. The percentage did, because the context did. That's the whole idea.
Back to those two runners at the start. In a men's race: the 42:30 at 38 scores around 63.6%. Your 44:30 at 59 scores around 72.3%. The slower runner ran the better race.
You can check any single result against the published tables on the methodology page.
What is a good age-graded percentage?
Above 60% is a solid club race, 70% is local class, 80% national and 90% world class. Those aren't motivational labels. Each one has a formula behind it, and 100% is the open-class standard the tables project. Most of us spend a racing career in the middle of that range, not the top.
| AG% | Tier | Example: M55, 10K | Example: W45, marathon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70%+ | Local class | ~44:20 | ~3:18 |
| 80%+ | National class | ~38:50 | ~2:53 |
| 90%+ | World class | ~34:30 | ~2:35 |
What each tier looks like in practice:
- 70%, local class. Competitive at club and regional level. A M55 running a 10K around 44:20, or a W45 marathon near 3:18.
- 80%, national class. Serious age-group racing, where people know your name. A M60 half around 1:29, or a W50 5K just over 20 minutes.
- 90%, world class. Masters national champions. The names that show up in results for a reason.
But the exact boundaries vary by governing body. USATF Masters calls 70% "regional" and saves "local" for 60% (USATF Masters, Age Grading, 2025). RaceRecords uses the common three-tier shorthand. The maths underneath is identical. Only the word on the band changes.
And almost nobody clears these bars. When I age-graded 100,807 Berlin Marathon finishers, fewer than one in ten reached 70%, and 80% was about 1 in 83.
Can you go above 100%? Rarely. It means the run beat the standard the tables project for your age, which is a modelled curve rather than a record lookup. It happens at the outer edge of the sport, and a world record doesn't guarantee it: Clare Elms's W60 1500m record graded 98.9% in the same season two of her road races cleared 100%.
If you want the clock times behind a tier rather than the percentages, the exact 80% target for every age from 35 to 80 is written out by sex and distance. Or run your last race through the calculator and see where it sits.
Why does the percentage matter more than the clock?
Here's the honest problem with absolute-time PRs. They only ever get harder to beat. You run 38:04 for a 10K at 26. You run 44:30 at 47. By the clock, you're slower. Full stop.
By the age-graded table, you might have improved. The percentage can be higher even though the stopwatch says otherwise. A slower time in a harder bracket isn't a consolation prize. It's a better measurement.
The reason is in that curve. The age factor moves with you, year after year, and it falls faster the older you get. Run the same time at 50 that you ran at 45, and your percentage climbs. Not in a step when you cross into the W50 band. A little more with every birthday. WMA and Alan Jones use single-year factors, so the curve is smooth.
In 2023, World Masters Athletics rebuilt its track factors from more than 2.8 million performances (World Masters Athletics, "Age Grading Leaps Forward", 2023). The point was to make that slope reflect real ageing, not a rough guess.
Most running apps stop at the clock. They show your fastest 10K and leave it there, getting harder to beat every birthday. That's why RaceRecords keeps both numbers side by side. Your lifetime fastest by the stopwatch, and your best percentage at any age. They tell different stories. You need both. And a Targets to Beat page that tells you what the second one costs today.
Why does my 5K score higher than my marathon?
Because the tables aren't built the same way at every distance. Most competitive runners score several points higher at 5K than at the marathon, and a gap of 5 to 10 points in that direction is the normal pattern rather than a weakness. My own spread runs from an 82.5% 10 English Miles down to 80.2% for the marathon.
Two things drive it. VO2max fades faster with age than threshold does, and the marathon's age factors stay near 1.0 much longer, so your raw time has to sit closer to the world best for the same score. The full explanation, with the physiology and the factor curves, is a post of its own. The short version: compare your percentage against your own other distances before you read it as a verdict on your marathon.
Does age grading replace age-group awards?
No, and it isn't trying to. Races hand out prizes in five-year brackets because a results page needs buckets it can print. Age grading scores your exact age on race day instead, which is why a 54-year-old can finish 75 seconds behind a 50-year-old and still run the better race.
Both can be true at once. The trophy follows the clock inside the bracket. The percentage tells you how the run rates against what is possible at your exact age, which is the comparison that still works next year, and at the next race, and against a runner twenty years older in another country.
Which tables does racerecords.run use?
Two reference systems, split by surface. Road races use Alan Jones 2025.
Track events use WMA 2023. Both are current Masters standards, and the version
applied shows as a chip, aj-2025 or wma-2023, on the race detail page.
You can always check the source yourself.
| Surface | Tables | Distances |
|---|---|---|
| Road | Alan Jones 2025 | 5K, 10K, 15K, 10 mi, half, 25K, 30K, marathon |
| Track | WMA 2023 | 1500m, mile, 3000m, 5000m, 10000m |
The WMA 2023 factors went global on 1 January 2023, built on single-year ages so the percentage moves with each birthday. The Alan Jones road tables refresh on a similar multi-year cadence, with 2025 the latest. A new release means I recompute every score to the current standard, not freeze the old one. Your history stays comparable. It's also why an official results page can hand you a different number than RaceRecords, usually an older edition of the same tables, not a mistake.
One limit. RaceRecords only grades races run from age 18. The road tables do go younger, but races you ran before your 18th birthday are stored with the percentage column left blank.
The usual objection at this point is that adjusting for age is a way of being kind to slow people. It isn't, and the arithmetic is blunter than most runners expect. Age grading is a stricter standard than the clock, not a softer one, and two calculators can still disagree about your number when they run different editions.
The full algorithm, both table sets, and a worked audit live on the methodology page. If a percentage ever looks wrong, the support page explains how to report it.
Either way, the number didn't care who crossed the line first.
Sources
- World Masters Athletics, "Age Grading Leaps Forward" — retrieved 2026-05-21, https://world-masters-athletics.org/news/age-grading-leaps-forward/
- Alan Jones, Age-Grade Tables (road, 2025 edition) — retrieved 2026-05-21, https://github.com/AlanLyttonJones/Age-Grade-Tables
- USATF Masters, Age Grading — retrieved 2026-05-21, https://usatfmasters.org/age-grading/
- RaceRecords, Methodology — retrieved 2026-05-21, https://racerecords.run/methodology