Pacing Strategy During 24-Hour Ultramarathon-Distance Running

Abstract

Purpose: To describe pacing strategy in a 24-h running race and its interaction with sex, age group, athletes' performance group, and race edition.

Methods: Data from 398 male and 103 female participants of 5 editions were obtained based on a minimum 19.2-h effective-running cutoff. Mean running speed from each hour was normalized to the 24-h mean speed for analyses.

Results: Mean overall performance was 135.6 ± 33.0 km with a mean effective-running time of 22.4 ± 1.3 h. Overall data showed a reverse J-shaped pacing strategy, with a significant reduction in speed from the second-to-last to the last hour. Two-way mixed ANOVAs showed significant interactions between racing time and both athlete performance group (F = 7.01, P < .001, η_p² = .04) and race edition (F = 3.01, P < .001, η_p² = .02) but not between racing time and either sex (F = 1.57, P = .058, ηp 2 < .01) or age group (F = 1.25, P = .053, η_p² = .01). Pearson product-moment correlations showed an inverse moderate association between performance and normalized mean running speed in the first 2 h (r = -.58, P < .001) but not in the last 2 h (r = .03, P = .480).

Conclusions: While the general behavior represents a rough reverse J-shaped pattern, the fastest runners start at lower relative intensities and display a more even pacing strategy than slower runners. The "herd behavior" seems to interfere with pacing strategy across editions, but not sex or age group of runners.

Keywords: competitive behavior; gender; track and field; ultraendurance; work distribution.