I have a query about the age-grading calculation.  It appears that I have a recent improvement of about 0.5% purely due to the fact that I recently had a birthday (logging the same run and time each side of my birthday shows this improvement).  Perhaps I should view it as a birthday present, but I suspect it is related to the accuracy of the age entered into the calculation being in a whole number of years.  Is there any chance the accuracy could be improved?

As I'm at age where performance tends to drop off, I find the age-grading measure particularly useful and motivating.  I think it also means that my age-grading values are more strongly dependent on the accuracy of the age entered.

Hi Tim,

I too am in your age band, in fact at 49, at the top end so the same thing happens to me and a fairly signifiacnt jump occurs as each birthday passes.

This is simply a function of the tables we use being published at yearly intervals. I guess we could interpolate them but we dont see a great advantage and this would make us out of line with everone else.

There is not a lot going for getting a year older but consider this one small perk.

Regards

Andy

By all means call me pedantic, but as the World Association of Veteran Athletics is now World Masters Athletics, shouldn't we refer to WMA age-grading rather than WAVA?

World Masters does sound better as opposed to veterans as it conjures up visions of a bunch of wrinkly old crocks in 50's white singlets staggering around Norman Wisdom style (as in corrie). 

That's pretty much why they changed it - they thought it was discouraging new members and, probably more importantly, putting off potential sponsors!