Abstract
BackgroundParticipation in half-marathon has been steeply increasing during the past decade. In line, a vast number of half-marathon running schedules has surfaced. Unfortunately, the injury incidence proportion for half-marathoners has been found to exceed 30% during 1-year follow-up. The majority of running-related injuries are suggested to develop as overuse injuries, which leads to injury if the cumulative training load over one or more training sessions exceeds the runners’ load capacity for adaptive tissue repair. Owing to an increase of load capacity along with adaptive running training, the runners’ running experience and pace abilities can be used as estimates for load capacity. Since no evidence-based knowledge exist of how to plan appropriate half-marathon running schedules considering the level of running experience and running pace, the aim of ProjectRun21 is to investigate the association between running experience or running pace and the risk of running-related injury.MethodsHealthy runners using Global Positioning System (GPS) watch between 18 and 65 years will be invited to participate in this 14-week prospective cohort study. Runners will be allowed to self-select one of three half-marathon running schedules developed for the study. Running data will be collected objectively by GPS. Injury will be based on the consensus-based time loss definition by Yamato et al.: “Running-related (training or competition) musculoskeletal pain in the lower limbs that causes a restriction on or stoppage of running (distance, speed, duration, or training) for at least 7 days or 3 consecutive scheduled training sessions, or that requires the runner to consult a physician or other health professional”.Running experience and running pace will be included as primary exposures, while the exposure to running is pre-fixed in the running schedules and thereby conditioned by design. Time-to-event models will be used for analytical purposes.DiscussionProjectRun21 will examine if particular subgroups of runners with certain running experiences and running paces seem to sustain more running-related injuries compared with other subgroups of runners. This will enable sport coaches, physiotherapists as well as the runners to evaluate their injury risk of taking up a 14-week running schedule for half-marathon.
Highlights
Participation in half-marathon has been steeply increasing during the past decade
Owing to the high popularity of engaging into half-marathon running, the results will be highly valuable for both runners as well as sport coaches and physiotherapists in practice to evaluate runners’ injury risk and thereby get an indication of their readiness of taking up 14-weeks of half-marathon training
For the runners, the results will add to their own assessment of their load capacity for engaging into a half-marathon running schedule available in sports magazines and on the Internet
Summary
Study design ProjectRun is designed as an observational prospective cohort study with 14-week follow-up. Generalized to, all runners have to fulfill a comprehensive baseline questionnaire including a range of different information about their demographics, previous and existing injuries, health and illness status, use of the health-care system, how many years they have been running since the age of 18 (>2 years is reported in years, otherwise in months), their volume of running within the past six months (typical weekly running distance, shortest and longest running distance, participation in any running competitions or achievements of any personal records), running style, running equipment (shoes and orthotics), and hours of participation in other sports They have to choose the start date and the running schedule they wish to follow, and they need to approve informed consent for participating as outlined in the information material. A loss to follow-up on 20% will be added to the sample sizes equivalent to 138 participants for the investigation of the association between running experience and RRI risk, while 108 participants for the association between running pace and RRI risk
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