Everyone is age graded on their system so you are being ranked in order of people of the same age. You can look at the rankings and fiddle about with it and put wome only and yur age group and see hwo yu compare. there are of course a lot of very good runners about some of whom have been running since they were very young whereas i have only been running a couple of years. Nice to just play about with the options and look at different scenarios. happy running brenda

Hi Brenda and thanks for your response to my query. I think you are right that I am trying to get quite technical. Since I started running a few years ago I think I've become a bit of a statistics geek!! I hadn't even realised until I looked back at Pof10 for the first time in ages, after my race on Wednesday that it was even giving me points, let alone what they represented! Would just be interested if anyone is able to explain.

I had over three months over the summer when I couldn't run at all due to a series of annoying injuries and it has taken me another couple of months of very sedate jogging to feel confident enough to get back to racing. And racing again has reawakened my fascination with the statistics.... :)

I suppose that what I am trying to work out is, if I am ranked by my handicap at 26,870 out of 119,529 of the women's 'overall' category of the ladder, then are my times being directly compared to the times of ladies much younger than myself in that category or is my performance adjusted to take account of my age to arrive at that ranking? And does the same apply with the 'uk overall'category of the ladder?

Thanks for taking the time to post a reply for me Brenda - it is much appreciated. :)

Hi Anne I am no expert and only been running for a couple of years. My friend introduced to be Runbritain rankings and power of ten earlier this year. When you have done a race it grades the race depending on weather and conditions. You are then graded on age and performance. You can play about with the settings and see your age grading which I always thinks makes you feel better as its not just about where you come in a race the younger ones should be faster and nice when you are faster than them. You can look at the rankings for your age and how you compare in the country too. As long as you are improving its fun. if you run parkrun which i do regualrly you will see that the grading for the course varies with the weather and makes you realise when you were perahps slower than you have been in other weeks. Just play about with the options and look at the graph where you started and where you are now. Hope this helps maybe doesnt answer some of your points but too technical for me. Hope you have realsied that when your performance improves on runbritain your handicap goes down and so shows a lower percentage next to your best performances if that makes sense. if you want an example go and look at my graphs and races I have done on Runbritain rankings. Best wishes brenda

Could anyone help me with details about the algorithm used to calculate your runbritain handicap? I know that it takes what it considers to be your 5 best performances and adjusts them to take account of the difficulty of the course and the conditions on the day but does it also allow for your age and sex? Or are you being directly compared against all other runners with just the course and conditions allowed for? Also, I ran my first race in 6 months last night after an injury, which made me take a look at my Power of 10 profile. I have always previously viewed it in the default setting but this time I looked at the other options and noticed that there was an option to order by the number of points for each performance. Can anyone tell me what these are and what they represent in terms of your performances please? Just curious!! :)