Performance comparison of long-distance running competitions in different meteorology and environment based influential conditions

Berke, Dávid (2019) Performance comparison of long-distance running competitions in different meteorology and environment based influential conditions. IDŐJÁRÁS / QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE HUNGARIAN METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE, 123 (3). pp. 313-328. ISSN 0324-6329

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Abstract

Long-distance running is one of the most popular daily sports, through which we can keep our health or take care of our body. Millions of people around the world run for different reasons like recreation, professionalism, mental balance, or fun. That is why long-distance running competitions are organized very often. The organizers have to know the expected meteorological conditions and several specific parameters and information about performance of the runners retroactively to support them effectively as well as adapting to the running attitude and main goals.The purpose of this study was on one side to develop a data analyzing tool with flexible and multifunctional analytical capabilities to identify which specific - especially meteorological - attributes of long-distance running competitions have relevant impact on the performance of the competitors, while on the other side to compare competitions with each other, which have different environmental and social properties in terms of running pace and age.Starting to design a tool named Running Competition Comparison Tool (RCCT), availability of existing data was discovered, focusing on Hungarian long-distance running competitions. Altogether results and environmental attributes of 28 Hungarian half-marathons and further 7 variable distance competitions were investigated. In all, 146,924 participants were involved and analyzed within this study between 1996 and 2017 within 5 km to 300 km. Specific and unique data classification methods were used to specify age and pace categories for realizing different kinds of statistical analyses. In a final phase, all classified data was represented and visualized by a two-dimensional colored matrix with automatic evaluation capability, combined with column and bar charts. Numbers of recreational athletes in Budapest national half-marathon have been continuously increased during the last two decades, especially in case of middle pace (5:00-6:59 min/km) runners. Due to a trend prediction of the study, numbers of half-marathon finishers could be reach 20,000 for 2030, which will mean 80-85% additional growth. Extraordinary meteorological conditions like unexpected high air temperature or humidity and several environmental parameters like ultra-distance and mountain course are able to impair recreational athletes' pace in a similar way as tiredness of well-trained ironman triathletes.According to this study, running distance and absolute elevation have maximum impact on long-distance running pace and separate age groups mostly. Air temperature and humidity together also have relevant impact on endurance running performance in cases of different distances. Especially high temperature (higher than 25 degrees C) or high humidity (higher than 70%) could influence long-distance running speed and fluid loss more than lower temperature and humidity. That study highlighted well that the impact of meteorological attributes are relevant in terms of running performance of long-distance running pace, hence organizers have to take meteorological conditions into account during their plan to be done.Numbers of half-marathon finishers have been continuously increasing since 1996, especially numbers of middle-aged runners. Orientation and main goal of the participants of Hungarian half-marathons have been completely changed from competitive (elite) to recreation and hobby. Because of the athlete separation of multi-distance running events, there are no significant differences between variable distanced (5 km, 10 km, 21 km, 42 km) competitions in terms of running pace.

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