ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 1999 March;39(1):12-5

Copyright © 1999 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Ultraendurance triathlon participation: typical race preparation of lower level triathletes

Gulbin J. P., Gaffney Ph. T.

School of Health Sciences, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

Background. This ­study ­sought to ­describe the train­ing prep­ar­a­tions and per­for­manc­es of low­er lev­el ultra­en­du­rance tri­ath­letes. The low­er lev­el or typ­i­cal ultra­en­du­rance ath­lete was ­defined as any par­tic­i­pant eli­gible to com­pete, irre­spec­tive of abil­ity.
Methods. Experimental ­design: participants com­plet­ed a ret­ro­spec­tive ques­tion­naire relat­ed to ­their ath­let­ic back­ground, tri­ath­lon expe­ri­ence and per­for­manc­es, and train­ing prep­ar­a­tion. Setting: all com­pet­i­tors in the 1995 Lanzarote Ironman (IM) tri­ath­lon had the oppor­tu­nity to com­plete the ques­tion­naire in the ­days ­prior to the ­race. Participants: 242 (230 m, 12 f) or 45% of the ­entire ­race ­field com­plet­ed the ques­tion­naire. Measures: measures of cen­tral ten­den­cy ­were ­used to ­describe all ­data. Forward ­step-­wise mul­ti­ple regres­sion tech­niques ­were ­used to pre­dict per­for­mance ­from train­ing var­i­ables. Statistical sig­nif­i­cance was accept­ed at p<0.05.
Results. Mean fin­ish ­time for all ­study par­tic­i­pants was 11.76 ­hours. Subjects ­were 34.2±8.8 ­years, 1.77±0.07 m, and 70.8±7.1 kg. They had 6.0±3.2 ­years expe­ri­ence in tri­ath­lon, had com­plet­ed 3.0±4.1 IM rac­es, and ­spent 21.5±10.8 ­weeks pre­par­ing for the IM. Training dis­tanc­es/­week for swim­ming, ­cycling and run­ning, ­were 8.8±4.3 km, 270±107 km, and 58.2±21.9 km, at a ­pace of 18.1 min/km, 31.8 km/hr, and 4.55 min/km respec­tive­ly. Previous ­best per­for­manc­es in Olympic dis­tance tri­ath­lon (1.5/40/10) cou­pled ­with week­ly ­cycling dis­tanc­es and long­est train­ing ­ride, ­could par­tial­ly pre­dict over­all per­for­mance (R2=0.57).
Conclusions. Finishing an IM ­requires ­less train­ing ­than has ­been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed in stud­ies ­that ­have pri­mar­i­ly ­focused on ­elite com­pet­i­tors. Additionally, train­ing dis­tanc­es ­appear to be a ­more impor­tant fac­tor for com­pet­i­tive suc­cess ­than train­ing pac­es.