How to read Power of 10: PBs, rankings and club records

If you have ever heard a club runner say they have been "powerof10'd", this is what they mean. Power of 10 is the UK's official track and field results and rankings database, and once you know how to read it, it tells you almost everything about an athlete's competitive history in seconds.

What Power of 10 actually is

It was set up by British Athletics ahead of the London 2012 Olympics to collect results from every licensed UK Athletics event officiated to a proper standard, and to rank athletes against each other nationally. It is free to use and covers track and field, road, and cross country events run under UK Athletics rules.

Finding an athlete

The search box on the homepage takes a name and, if there are several matches, other details like club or county to narrow it down. An athlete's profile lists their personal bests across every event they have competed in, broken down by season, along with their club and age category.

Reading the rankings lists

Rankings are split by event, sex, and age category: U13, U15, U17, U20, Senior, and Masters. Filter by year to see who is ranked where nationally in a given season, or look at all-time lists to see historic standards. Being "ranked" simply means a result has been recorded against your name in Power of 10's database for that event and category, nothing more mysterious than that.

Club records and comparisons

Search by club to see everyone registered there and compare training partners, or look up a club's all-time records for a given event. It is also the fastest way to check whether a performance you have heard about actually happened as described, since the raw result is right there.

A word of caution

Power of 10 only shows results from properly licensed, officiated events. A time run at an informal club time trial or an unaffiliated fun run will not appear, so an athlete's true fastest time is not always their Power of 10 personal best. If you run mostly on the road rather than the track, runbritain is the equivalent site worth knowing about too.

Not registered with a club yet, so nothing shows up under your name at all? See our guide to finding and joining an athletics club, or browse tracks near you to see which clubs train where.