This morning, I had my first parkrun race in Gainesville, before heading back to Paris. (Thanks to Florence Forbes who pointed out this initiative to me.) Which reminded me of the race I ran in Helsinki a few years ago. Without the “self-transcendance” topping…! While the route was very urban, it was a fun opportunity to run a race with a few other runners. My time of 19.56 is not my best by far but, excuses, excuses, I was not feeling too well and the temperature was quite high (21⁰) and I finished in the first three runners, just seconds behind two young fellows who looked like they were still in high school. (I am now holding the record of that race for my age group as well!) Anyway, this is a great way to join races when travelling and not worry about registration, certificates, &tc.
Parkrun also provides an age-grade adjusted ranking (78.8%), which is interesting but statistically puzzling as this is the ratio of one’s time over the fastest time (ever?) in the age x gender category. Given that fastest times are extreme, this depends on one individual and hence has a high variability. Especially in higher (meaning older!) veteran categories. A quantile in the empirical distribution would sound better. I came across this somewhat statistical analysis of the grade,
