Abstract
This study aimed to describe the psychological and nutritional aspects of runners and identify the association of mental training and dietary supplements with performance in road races. For this, a cross-sectional study was performed with 560 recreational runners, who participated in 2014 or 2015 Unicamp Running. The participants answered a Google Docs questionnaire about personal, emotional and nutritional aspects. A sub-sample of 302 runners was monitored using chip technology to identify the running time in 5 km and 10 km. The main motivations for the run were to improve health (73%), well-being (62,5%) and quality of life (57%). Approximately 34% consumed dietary supplements, among which 70.5% consumed proteins and 40.2% carbohydrates. The main motivations for this consumption were increased competitiveness (62.1%) and health (46.3%). There was no association between the consumption of dietary supplements and performance in road races. The participants who did mental training presented 2.5 to 2.3 times higher chance of better performance compared to the participants who did not do mental training (p=0.020 and 0.039, respectively). We hypothesized that dietary supplementation without nutritional follow-up does not offer sporting advantage and that mental training is associated with better performance in recreational runners.
 
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Highlights
In recent years, there has been increase in the number of runners around the world
The psychological and nutritional aspects of all participants are in the Table 2
We characterized psychological and nutritional aspects of recreational runners and identified that mental training can be associated with better performance in road races
Summary
There has been increase in the number of runners around the world. Data from the Sporting Habits Survey in Spain reveal prevalence of running in approximately 30% of physically active people (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2015). The increase of runners can be perceived through Strava®, a social network focused on practitioners of sports such as running, cycling and swimming. In Brazil, there are more than 4.5 million users and 1.4 million races were registered in 2018, an increase of 94.6% compared to last year (Strava, 2018). Runners are increasing in the Brazilian population, there is no characterization about their profile, resulting in a lack of knowledge about the psychological and nutritional behaviour of road races practitioners
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