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An independent guide to UK running events. Not the official website of any race, organiser or timing company, and not an entry or results service. About this site

How to find old race results

Finding a time from a race you ran years ago can take some detective work, because results move around and old systems are switched off. These are the places worth checking, roughly in the order to try them.

Before you start

Gather what you can remember: the exact name of the event, the year, the distance, and the name and club you entered under. A bib number from an old photo or a kept race number is very useful. A rough finish time helps you scan long lists. Remember that you may have entered under a previous surname, a shortened first name or a misspelling.

Please note that this site is a guide only. It does not hold or publish individual race results, so we cannot look up a time for you. The steps below are how to trace one yourself.

Where to look

1. The event organiser's website

Start with the race's own site. Many events keep a results or archive page with a list for each year, sometimes as a searchable table and sometimes as a plain document to download.

2. The timing company that timed the race

Organisers usually hire a specialist timing company, and the results are often hosted on that company's site, not the organiser's. The results page for a recent year will normally show who timed it. Timing companies tend to keep searchable archives across all the events they have covered, which makes them a good second stop.

Bear in mind that events change timing companies. A race timed by one firm this year may have used a different one five years ago, and a different one again before that. Each will hold only the years it worked on, so you may need to find out who timed your particular year.

3. The national rankings databases

For UK road races held under a licence on a measured course, results are passed to the national rankings. The two to search are Power of 10 and runbritain rankings. Power of 10 lists performances for registered club athletes and those who have reached certain standards. runbritain rankings covers a much wider range of runners in licensed road races and gives each a handicap score.

Search by your name, then check the club and age group to make sure the profile is yours and not a namesake's. These databases go back many years, although coverage is thinner the further back you go, and races that were not licensed or not accurately measured may not appear at all.

4. Club records

If you ran as a member of a club, ask there. Clubs often keep their own records of members' race times, championship tables and newsletters, and can be the best archive there is for races from before online results were routine.

5. Local newspapers

Before the internet, the local paper was where results were printed. Sports pages listed the leading finishers and local club runners, sometimes the whole field for a small race. Libraries and county archives hold back copies, and some newspaper archives can be searched online by name and date.

6. Web archives of the organiser's old pages

When a race website is redesigned, or the event ends, old results pages often disappear. Public web archives take periodic snapshots of websites and may have captured the page you need. Look up the organiser's address and browse snapshots from the weeks after the race. Plain lists are usually preserved well. Results that sat behind a search box are often missing, because the archive saves pages, not the database behind them.

7. Ask the organiser

If nothing turns up, write to the organiser through the contact form on the event site. Give the year, distance, your name as entered, your club and bib number if known. Many organisers keep spreadsheets of past results that were never put online, or know which timing company holds them.

Why old results go missing

  • Old systems are retired. Results platforms are replaced or shut down, and the links that pointed to them stop working. The data may still exist but no longer be online.
  • Timing companies change, merge or close. Archives do not always move with them.
  • Paper only. Results from before the late 1990s were often typed and posted out, and survive only in club files and newspapers.

Making sense of what you find

Older results may show only a single time, with no chip time and few columns. Our guide on how to read race results explains the usual layout, and chip time vs gun time covers which figure counts as a personal best. Age group codes have changed over the years too, so see running age categories if the abbreviations are unfamiliar.

Once you have the time, a race time predictor will show what it suggests for other distances. Save yourself a future search by keeping your own log of event, date, distance, chip time and position. If you fancy beating the old time, the events guide is a good place to start.