Aren’t we all curious how we stack up against our former selves? As we age, our times unavoidably get slower – but that doesn’t mean we’re not getting faster. Previously, we couldn’t accurately compare our racing history across age groups. But thanks to Ironman’s new age-graded standards, now we can.
Savvy NYX athlete Grant Burkhart saw the announcement about the new Ironman qualifying system and had the brilliant insight that he – and all of us – could use the age-graded standards to compare his today self against his younger self. Take your times from any two age groups, use the age-graded standards to calculate age-graded finish times, and – voila! – you have an apples-to-apples comparison of your current self to your younger self. Pretty nifty, right?
Let’s review how the age-graded finish time calculation works. Say you are a female who completed a 70.3 when you were 37 in 5:49:25. Using the age-group standard table below, we see that your finish time multiplier is 0.9658. We can calculate your age-graded finish time as follows:
- Convert your finish time of 5:49:25 from hh:mm:ss to seconds: 5*60*60+49*60+25=20,965
- Multiply that by your age-group standard: 20,965*0.9658=20,248
- Convert that from seconds back to h:mm:ss:
- 20,248/3600=5.62 → 5 hours
- subtract out the 5 hours: 20,248-(5*60*60)=2248
- 2248/60=37.5 → 37 minutes
- subtract out the 37 minutes: 2248-(37*60)=28
- Your age-graded finish time is 5:37:28
Using the same process, we can calculate your age-graded finish time for the race you did last year at age 52. You finished that race in 6:09:43. Using your age-group standard of 0.9016, we calculate your age-graded finish time to be 5:33:20. See, you are getting faster with age!
The age-group standards will be updated annually. The 2026 standards (set in 2025, for qualification to the 2026 World Championships) are:
Kona Age Group Standards
| Age Group | Men | Women |
| 18-24 | 0.9698 | 0.8567 |
| 25-29 | 0.9921 | 0.8961 |
| 30-34 | 1.0000 | 0.8977 |
| 35-39 | 0.9895 | 0.8866 |
| 40-44 | 0.9683 | 0.8707 |
| 45-49 | 0.9401 | 0.8501 |
| 50-54 | 0.9002 | 0.8125 |
| 55-59 | 0.8667 | 0.7778 |
| 60-64 | 0.8262 | 0.7218 |
| 65-69 | 0.7552 | 0.6828 |
| 70-74 | 0.6876 | 0.6439 |
| 75-79 | 0.6768 | 0.5521 |
| 80-84 | 0.5555 | TBD* |
| 85-89 | 0.5416 | TBD* |
*Note: the Women 80-84 and 85-89 age groups are TBD because, over the past 5 editions of racing the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, there have not been any finishers in these age groups. The Kona Standard will be updated when we have finishers in these age groups.
70.3 Age Group Standards
| Age Group | Men | Women |
| 18-24 | 1.0000 | 0.9921 |
| 25-29 | 0.9929 | 1.0000 |
| 30-34 | 0.9655 | 0.9828 |
| 35-39 | 0.9500 | 0.9658 |
| 40-44 | 0.9262 | 0.9426 |
| 45-49 | 0.8978 | 0.9192 |
| 50-54 | 0.8833 | 0.9016 |
| 55-59 | 0.8565 | 0.8746 |
| 60-64 | 0.8192 | 0.8391 |
| 65-69 | 0.7640 | 0.7775 |
| 70-74 | 0.7119 | 0.7348 |
| 75-79 | 0.6419 | 0.6234 |
| 80-84 | 0.5095 | TBD* |
| 85-89 | 0.5402 | TBD* |
*Note: the Women 80-84 and 85-89 age groups are TBD because, over the past 5 editions of racing the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, there have not been any finishers in these age groups. The IRONMAN 70.3 Standard will be updated when we have finishers in these age groups.