[rconti]

Yeah, doing it by flat time delta rather than percent delta seems fundamentally flawed, but of course it makes it easier for the average person to understand.

I also don't understand what the motives are behind how the age/gender buckets are calculated in the first place. I'm not sure if it's public or not.

Are they:

* Trying to calculate based on an nth percentile finishing time across each bucket?

* Trying to ensure roughly equal percentages of applicants from each bucket get accepted?

* Something else?

[k2enemy]

Making sure they can accept a lot of high disposable income 40+ runners that will buy a lot of merch. The time cutoffs start to get much easier after 40.

[Guillaume86]

Doesn't look true, I inputed the times in an age grading calculator and 39 cutoff time was easier than 44, even if it's not very accurate I doubt it's "much easier".

[scott_w]

It’s a common problem. Time trialling uses Age Adjusted Time for events which uses a flat time reduction based on age. One guy pointed out the absurdity that he’s still extremely fast in his 50s, so his AAT end up impossibly fast, winning him a lot of events as a result!