Masters Track & Field Standards
The PB awards do not include standards for masters athletes, which are age groups every 5 years starting at 35. Therefore, the club has set its own standards for Masters athletes at levels Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond. The club will award medals for athletes achieving a Bronze standard, with similar rules to the PB Awards:
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The athlete must be first claim to Sutton in Ashfield Harriers & Athletics Club
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The medal will be awarded for the athlete's best event across the year (April to March), not each event.
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Within an age group, the athlete will only be awarded a new medal if they have improved a level compared to their previous best.
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Athletes that are in a new age group will be awarded a new medal even if it is not a higher level they have previously achieved.
The standards can be downloaded here:
Why have we produced our own standards?
There has been some previous good work on calculating percentage scores for performances that have made publicly available, notably by Howard Grubb. His calculator is recommended by the British Masters Athletics. This calculator can look up individual scores, but it is not easy to use to set standards across all events. Also, the way field events are scored does not well represent performances that are not close to the best in the world. For example, a hammer throw of 35m, which is very respectable, is given the same score as a 24 second 100m run, which is extremely slow.
Sutton Harriers have produced these standards based on the world records in the age groups, with some adjustments for outliers and with field events brought into line with track events. The standards align to the road running standards. Each level is slightly harder than the road running equivalant, but only requires a single performance, whereas the road running standards require three performances to meet the standard.