What is the Power of Ten?
After a recent discussion on a couple of Facebook groups about London Marathon results not yet appearing on British Athletics’ Power of Ten website (https://www.thepowerof10.info), I thought it was a good time to write an introduction to this database of athletic performances to anyone who hasn’t yet discovered it. Set up by British Athletics prior to the 2012 Olympics, this is a ranking system for athletes that was started in order to set targets and challenge athletes to improve track and field performances in the run up to the games.
The website lists competitors, coaches and clubs registered in the UK. If you take part in organised races and are a member of UKA (usually through a registered athletics or running club) your performances will usually be listed.
You can view data by individual athlete, club, coach and have a good nosey at others performances. You can also, via RunBritain (https://www.runbritainrankings.com a sister site which specialises in road races rather than track and field), see how you are ranked in the UK for different distances of road race.
The most commonly used tool is the athlete search – you can search for anyone you like, including yourself. Just enter the name and any other details in the search box on the homepage, and you should find the relevant athlete.
Let’s take my profile… search for Hulbert and you get 23 athletes. Only one Martin so let’s have a closer look by clicking on “show profile”. Here you can see details about me, athletes I coach (just the one, apparently! You can add me as coach through your profile if you want), and my best known performances (spot the hungover parkrun pacing anomaly!).
On the far right you can see my UK rankings from RunBritain. These vary considerably year by year, especially with COVID meaning not many races have been run of late, but my best ranking is 31st in the UK over 20 miles in the 45-49 age category and 37th V45 in the marathon in 2019 (puts me in the top 0.6% of athletes over the marathon in 2019).
If you click through to RunBritain you get a lot more stats, including a handicap score that is aimed at putting a number on your progress over time, taking into account course difficulty, weather etc.). There’s also a national ladder that ranks you against all the road runners in the UK based on gender, and will even give you your position as a runner in the local area! I’m 7th in my local area overall, but 1st over 45 male.
There are a lot of other stats and tools to play with, far too many to go through here, but you can visit either website to find out more.
Some of the questions my clients have asked me recently about this include:
Why are only some parkruns included? Because not all courses are officially measured, and not all parkruns submit their results to England Athletics.
Can you add races that aren’t there? Yes, but only ones on an officially measured / registered course.
What does MT mean? Multiterrain (or off road)
When will London 2021 results appear? These have been delayed but are now on there.
Powerof10 have their own FAQs here which are quite useful: https://www.thepowerof10.info/aboutpowerof10/faq.aspx
If you want to know any more, post your questions below and if I can’t answer them, I’m sure some of our more nerdy club members might…enjoy data crunching! (And if you like data crunching, another website you may like is https://www.fetcheveryone.com… I may do a coaching tip on this one day too!
Join the Club at MH Runners Club
Do you want a personalised training plan?
Want to know more about running or personal training?
Contact me today to ask any questions or to book your FREE consultation.
Email me at martinhulbertpt@gmail.com or contact me via Facebook Messenger
Martin Hulbert
Running Coach & Personal Trainer Leicestershire
MH Health and Fitness Online Community
www.facebook.com/mhhealthandfitness.co.uk
#MHrunners
