Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2021 Sep 16;16(9):e0256888. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256888. eCollection 2021.
Ultrarunning requires extraordinary endurance but the psychological factors involved in successful ultrarunning are not well understood. One widely held view is that fluctuations in mood play a pivotal role in performance during endurance events. However, this view is primarily based on comparisons of mood before and after marathons and shorter running events. Indeed, to date no study has explicitly examined mood changes during a competive ultramarathon. To address this issue, we measured mood fluctuations in athletes competing in the Hardmoors 60, a 100 km, single day continuous trail-ultramarathon, and examined how variation in mood related to performance, as measured by completion time. The key finding was that the variability of athletes Total Mood Disturbance (TMD) score was significantly and positively correlated with completion time, consistent with the idea that mood is an important factor in determining race performance. Athletes also experienced a significant increase in tension immediately prior to race onset. This effect was more pronounced in less experienced athletes and significantly attenuated by measurement stage 1 at 35.4 km, which suggests the effect was driven by the release of pre-competition anxiety. Depression, anger and TMD were significantly lower at the pre-race measurement compared to the baseline measurement taken the week before. Consistent with previous studies, there were also significant increases in fatigue, anger and TMD during the race. The data are interpreted in terms of the Psychobiological model of endurance and may have broader implications for the understanding of endurance performance in other domains.
超长距离跑需要非凡的耐力，但人们对成功进行超长距离跑所涉及的心理因素了解甚少。一种广泛持有的观点认为，情绪波动在耐力事件中的表现中起着关键作用。然而，这种观点主要是基于对马拉松和更短跑步事件前后情绪的比较。事实上，迄今为止，尚无研究明确检查过在竞争性超长马拉松比赛中情绪的变化。为了解决这个问题，我们测量了参加 Hardmoors 60 的运动员的情绪波动，Hardmoors 60 是一项 100 公里、单日连续越野超长马拉松比赛，并研究了情绪变化与完赛时间（以完成时间衡量）的关系。主要发现是，运动员的总体情绪困扰（TMD）得分的可变性与完赛时间呈显著正相关，这与情绪是决定比赛表现的重要因素的观点一致。运动员在比赛开始前也会立即感到紧张情绪明显增加。这种影响在经验较少的运动员中更为明显，在 35.4 公里处的第 1 阶段测量时明显减轻，这表明这种影响是由比赛前焦虑的释放所驱动的。与基线测量相比，赛前测量时的抑郁、愤怒和 TMD 显著降低。与之前的研究一致，比赛期间疲劳、愤怒和 TMD 也显著增加。数据根据耐力的心理生物学模型进行解释，可能对理解其他领域的耐力表现具有更广泛的意义。
