Original articles   

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2001 June;41(2):170-6

Copyright © 2002 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Marathon finishers and non-finishers characteristics. A preamble to success

Yeung S. S., Yeung E. W., Wong T. W.

From the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong * Department of Accident and Emergency Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital 3 Lok Man Road, Chai Wan, Hong Kong

Background. To inves­ti­gate if the char­ac­ter­is­tics and train­ing pro­files of run­ners are sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tors to pre­dict a suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a mar­a­thon.
Methods. Experimental ­design: com­par­a­tive inves­ti­ga­tion ­between two ­groups of run­ners at a mar­a­thon ­race. Setting: par­tic­i­pants of the ­study ­came ­from the 1998 Standard Chartered New Airport International Marathon in Hong Kong. Participants: 113 run­ners ­were inves­ti­gat­ed, of ­which 58 run­ners ­dropped out at the ­first 10 km of the ­race, ­while the oth­er 55 ­were ­those ­that con­sult­ed for phys­io­thearpy ser­vice ­after the mar­a­thon. Measures: ­using ques­tion­naire, the char­ac­ter­is­tics and the train­ing pro­files of ­these run­ners ­were ­obtained. These includ­ed week­ly train­ing dis­tance, long­est and short­est train­ing dis­tance per ses­sion in one ­week; ­warm-up and stretch­ing exer­cise ­with the train­ing ses­sions, num­ber of mar­a­thons pre­vi­ous­ly fin­ished and the ­runners’ opin­ion of opti­mal train­ing mile­age to com­plete a mar­a­thon.
Results. Independent t-­tests ­with Bonferroni adjust­ment ­were ­used to inves­ti­gate the dif­fer­ence ­between the two ­groups, the ­results ­showed sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the week­ly train­ing dis­tance (p=0.00), long­est and short­est train­ing dis­tance per ­week (p=0.00), and per­son­al opin­ion on opti­mal week­ly train­ing dis­tance for a mar­a­thon (p=0.00). Logistic regres­sion mod­el­ing was ­then ­employed to deter­mine var­i­ables ­that ­best pre­dict the like­li­hood of com­plet­ing a mar­a­thon.
Conclusions. The find­ings indi­cate ­that the non-fin­ish­ers are poor­ly pre­pared and the ­results ­also iden­ti­fy ­that the long­est mile­age cov­ered per train­ing ses­sion is the ­best pre­dic­tor for a suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a mar­a­thon ­with an ­odds of 1.21.