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. 2022 May 9;19(9):5760.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19095760.

Oxygen Uptake Measurements and Rate of Perceived Exertion during a Marathon

Véronique Billat  1   2 , Luc Poinsard  2 , Florent Palacin  2 , Jean Renaud Pycke  3 , Michael Maron  4
Affiliations

Oxygen Uptake Measurements and Rate of Perceived Exertion during a Marathon

Véronique Billat et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Although the marathon race has been democratized, it remains complex due to the famous "hitting the wall" phenomenon after the 25th km. To characterize this "wall" from a physiological and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) perspective in recreational marathon runners, we report first continuous breath-by-breath gas exchange measurements during an actual marathon race. In order to test the hypothesis that RPE could be a candidate for controlling the marathon pace, this study examined the relationship between RPE and the physiological variables time course throughout a marathon. Only the respiratory frequency and heart rate increased progressively during the race in all the runners, while the oxygen uptake and ventilatory rate followed different kinetics according the individuals. However, the indexation of the physiological parameters and speed by RPE showed the same decreased tendency for all the runners. In conclusion, these results suggest that running a marathon must be self-paced with the RPE.

Keywords: cardiovascular drift; endurance running; hitting the wall; physiology of exercise; positive split; self-pace.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure A1
Figure A1
V˙E, V˙O2, Vt and speed during the marathon.
Figure A2
Figure A2
Rf, HR, RPE and speed during the marathon.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Rating of Perceived Exertion during the marathon. In the (a) group of runners the RPE increased once at the fifth km, in the (b) group runners RPE increased at the 15–20th km and (c) group runners RPE increased only at the 30th km. Among this last group, we notice runner 6 who had only one RPE increase for the entire marathon.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Correlation circle for unrotated principal component analyses (PCA) on each physiological and cadence responses during the marathon for the runner 3 who is representative of all the nine marathoners.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Correlation circles for unrotated principal component analyses (PCA) on each physiological and cadence responses during the 5 km part of the marathon. Vectors are the loadings on PC1 (x-axis) and PC2 (y-axis).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Dendogram for the classification of different runners’ profile according their physiological response during the marathon.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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