First Time Users

Welcome to the Colorado Masters Records Project, the repository of the fastest known track times (FKTs) run by Masters (age 30+) athletes in the State of Colorado. By way of background, when I turned 70, I started looking for the Colorado age group records as part of goal setting for the year. To my surprise, the only records out there were for the mile, half marathon and marathon and they were structured in 10, rather than 5, year increments. As a long time data geek, fixing that seemed a worthwhile challenge!

Methodology

Track seemed the logical place to start as there are (a) a relatively finite number of Masters eligible track meets and (b) results are relatively standardized (as opposed to road, where distance measurement and grade differences are a challenge). From that point, the project proceeded down two pathways:

• First, we pulled whatever records we could find off the internet. We think we have most of the meets post 2019 or so, missing more before then as results are not online. Fortunately, there are good historical records from the Colorado Senior Games and Rocky Mountain State Games going back to the 1970s so we were able to include those results.
• Once an initial listing was developed, we ran the results by a number of older track athletes, many of whom have been competing in Colorado for decades, to get their input. This enhanced the database with a number of additional FKT-eligible times. At the present time we have more than 5,700 individual records from 266 different meets going back to 1979.

All that said, the Colorado Masters Records Project is designed to be a continuing effort and we need your help. There are undoubtedly a substantial number of fast times not presently included in the database, particularly from races prior to 2019. If you know of any times that would make the top three in any particular distance/age category, please let me know and we will include them. Simple criteria: outdoor track race run in the State of Colorado (a "Colorado Soils" time). There is a "Submit a Missing Time" link on the home page or you can contact me directly at pottle@comcast.net.

Secondly, there are no doubt database errors, usually coming from mistakes in the raw internet data. These can be as simple as misspelled names or a runner placed in an incorrect age group. Let us know of any errors you find, bad links, etc.

How to use

Hopefully the site is straightforward and easy to use. From the home page you can simply specify a race distance and gender, and the three fastest times/athletes for each age group will be shown. You can sort between the three fastest times or the three fastest runners (to adjust for situations where one individual has multiple top 3 times) with the "1 Per Runner" toggle.

Alternatively, you can enter the name of a specific athlete and the times we have for that athlete will come up. I urge everyone to check their own name to see what races might be missing. Please make a special effort to enter any missing times, particularly any times that would make the top three for a distance/age group. If you cannot document the time (i.e. with an internet link, news article, etc.) please reach out to me directly to discuss. We have a process for adding these non-verified times but with an "*" until we can independently confirm.

There is a separate link to "Data Sources" on the main page if you are interested. Hopefully we can find more meet information as the Colorado Masters Records Project receives wider distribution.

Thanks

A huge thank you to all who helped with this project, providing data and advice and reviewing the beta version. A particular shout out to my son Bill, who actually built the database and used a variety of AI techniques to pull data by name and age from online sources, saving countless manual input and review hours. We would not have been able to do this without all of your support. I hope you enjoy the results - please reach out with any additional data, corrections or suggestions.

Thanks,
Jack Pottle