What is grandprix.run?

I envision this to someday be a website that can facilitate intra and inter running club competition on a level playing field via Age-graded Tables. For now... baby steps towards that end.

This project is partially inspired by the hard work of my friend Mike Friedl that he did/does for the South Coast Roadrunners.

Other goals are for an individual runner to input all of their races over the years and be able to compare their 5k at age X to their marathon at age Y.

The Rules of the Grand Prix

Over the course of a year there is one race per month that a running club chooses as a grand prix run. Usually the race distance is 5k to half marathon but sometimes may include a marathon as long as an alternative shorter distance is also included. Each race is age-graded to the American record for that runner's age and gender. A time that exactly matches an American record would score 1000 points. A time that was 75% of the record would score 750 points. After a year (and 12 races), the best 9 races for each runner are added up and that total is compare to every other participant to see who wins. Usually awards go 10 or 20 deep but this depends on club size and participation rates.

TODO

  1. Make a script to pull in values for records from the USATF
  2. Or these tables from Alan Jones
  3. With a runner object with an array of race objects calculate the relative "quality" of their races in a visual manner.
  4. Possibly also add race prediction calculators

Other Resources

  1. http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/a-new-approach-to-age-grading-marathon-times
  2. http://www.runnersworld.com/run-the-numbers/age-graded-tables-updated