Running races index

My running journey is not all about parkrun, I also love running official, chipped running races.

I live in London, so most of my shorter distances will be in London or the South East of England, but I genuinely enjoy a few bits of run tourism here and there and I will travel for a nice race, ideally adding a bit of traditional tourism around it to discover a new place.

There are many ways to find interesting running races. For longer distances, there is plenty of information about large, destination events like major marathons or landmark half marathons. However, I truly enjoy also local, smaller 5Ks and 10Ks, where savouring the gritty, casual experience of our hobby is easier and raw.

My first Marathon was in Manchester in 2021, just after COVID, then I went on running Berlin 2022 and London 2023. I would love to complete all Abbott World Majors, eventually. I’ve run a lot of HMs, 10Ks and 5Ks, most of them before I started keeping this blog about running, running races and parkrun. My earlier running races will not be covered here, but I will keep adding as I run new events.

On the tables below:

Click on 📖 to reach the write-up dedicated to that running race.

Click on 📹 to reach the video highlights dedicated to that running race, hosted on the races playlist of my YouTube Channel

Official running races: my Personal Bests (PBs)

We run official races because of the atmosphere, the social side to them, the location, the unique opportunity to enjoy special places with closed roads, charity and many other reasons.

But one of the reasons most people enter running events is challenge themselves. To see if you can run a marathon. To see if you can improve your time in a 10K. To see how your progression is going using an objective, chipped time in a standardise race environment. GPS watches and free runs around your town or a local park are great, but there is no way to be 100% sure the distance is correct and we are not cheating. Running races provide officially measure distance and objective, correct chipped timing. So here they are, my official, chipped PBs recorded during running races.

Distance	PB	Age grade	at	on
5K	24:51	54.4%	Battersea Park 5K	May 2021
10K	51:29	53.5%	Kempton Park 10K	April 2021
Half Marathon	1:59:38	49.7%	Newbury Racecourse HM	October 2020
Marathon	5:19:35	39.3%	Manchester Marathon	October 2021

So yeah, here is my running career so far. Eminently average from 5K to HM, then pretty mediocre across the 3 marathons I’ve finished. Why? As much as I was always motivated to do that, so far I have not managed to stick to a marathon training plan properly..

Running races: what is Age Grade?

Running performance can only really be compared with the broader population across the same gender and age groups. There are physiological differences between men and women and what you can realistically achieve changes slightly as you age. It would not be fair to compare the performance of a woman in her 40s with the performance of a man in his 30s. Fairly uncontroversial, I guess?

Well, this is where age grade comes into the equation. You can find dozens of dedicated articles online, here is one.

But in a nutshell, what that percentage says is where your time (at the age you had when you achieved it) compares within the statistical distribution of results achieved by people of your gender and within your age group. There are plenty of free calculators for age grade results online.

If your PB spits out a 50% age grade, you are the definition of an average runner for that distance. If you below, you are less than average, if above, you are more than average.

Final comment to make us middle-of-the-pack runners a bit better about ourselves: there is some self-selection bias on how age grades are calculated, since they are based on a sample of people who bothered running officially timed races and, presumably, trained at least a bit for them. You are likely better than what your age grade indicates if compared with the broader population. At least a little bit. 🙂