Original title: A Scoping Review of Physiological and Behavioural Pain Responses of Ultramarathon Runners
This review gathers research on how ultramarathon runners respond to pain during races. Some runners become less sensitive to pain during exercise, while others become more sensitive as inflammation develops. Runners may also change how they move, take pain medicine, or receive massage. The review finds that pain may go along with worse race performance, but it does not establish what causes what.
Imagine walking a long route with sore feet. Sometimes, after you keep moving, the soreness feels less noticeable; other times, irritation makes each step hurt more. In this paper, those different experiences correspond to runners becoming less or more sensitive to pain, while changing their steps or seeking relief may relate to how they finish the race.
Pain can affect how runners move, whether they use medication or massage, and how well they perform. Understanding these responses could help guide future research into ways to manage pain during ultramarathons, though this review does not show which responses cause better performance.
The review reports associations between pain responses and performance, not causal mechanisms. Its authors say future research should investigate how pain experiences, responses, and race performance are linked. The abstract does not specify other limitations or how strong the evidence is.
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A Scoping Review of Physiological and Behavioural Pain Responses of Ultramarathon Runners — Marie Delalay, Sabina Hotz Boendermaker — Sports — doi:10.3390/sports14100427
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.