Fatigue and Recovery: a Comparison Between Trail and Marathon

Fatigue and Recovery: a Comparison Between Trail and Marathon

Road marathon is a famous running race known for hundreds of years. Trail running is an emerging running discipline which count new runners every year. Trail running and road marathon are two running endurance disciplines which differed by variation of elevation and nature of the terrain. While marathon is essentially run on flat roads, trail races are realized on steep paths (mountain, desert…) with an important variation of elevation. Neuromuscular, biomechanical and physiological consequences are different depending on the discipline, especially with a greater eccentric contribution in trail running. In spite of this characteristic, trail runners take part in several races longer than 40 km per year, while road runners participate in one to two marathons per year.

Some studies focused on fatigue and recovery following 30-to-40-km trail races or marathon but no direct comparison between both disciplines have been done yet. A direct comparison between marathon and trail would aim to better understand if the occurrence of fatigue is more important or if the recovery is longer in one of the two disciplines. The comparison is also a way to better understand mechanisms involved in fatigue and recovery following a trail and a marathon. Then, this research could be applied to improve specificity of training and prevent risk of injuries. This project aims to compare fatigue and recovery following a trail and a marathon.

Inclusion Criteria:

Common for MARASIM, TRAILSIM and TRAILNAT:

• Male or female
• 18-55 years old
• Endurance runners who run at least one running session of 20 km per week
• Being able to run a marathon under 5 h or finishing a trail of 30 km during the last 3 years
• Refrain from participating to a competition one month before the first visit and during the duration of the study
• To have a medical certificate of no contraindication of running practise in competition
• Registered with a social security scheme
• Having given the written consent freely

Specific for the 3 groups :

• Specialist of trail running (TRAILSIM and TRAILNAT)
• Specialist of road running (MARASIM)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Subjects who present cardiac or articular chronic pathologies (example: repeated sprain, patellar or joint problems)
• Subjects who present chronic or central neurological pathologies
• Subjects deprived of liberty or who should be legally deprived
• Subjects who report to take forbidden products by the World Anti-Doping Agency
• pregnant or breastfeeding woman