Environment and Scheduling Effects on Sprint and Middle Distance Running Performances

et al. (2013) Environment and Scheduling Effects on Sprint and Middle Distance Running Performances. PLoS ONE 8(11): e79548. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079548 Environment and Scheduling Effects on Sprint and Middle Distance Running Performances Amal Hada 0 Fre de ric Dor 0 Marion Guillaume 0 Laurent Quinquis 0 Andy Marc 0 Laurie-Anne Marquet 0 Juliana Antero-Jacquemin 0 Claire Tourny-Chollet 0 Fran cois Desgorces 0 Geoffroy Berthelot 0 Jean-Franc ois Toussaint 0 Alejandro Lucia, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Spain 0 1 IRMES (biomedical Research Institute of Sports Epidemiology , Paris , France) , INSEP (Institut National du Sport de l'Expertise et de la Performance), Paris, France, 2 Universite de Rouen, Faculte des Sciences du Sport et de l'Education Physique CETAPS (Centre d'Etude Transformations des Activite s Physiques et Sportives), Mont- Saint-Aignan, France, 3 Paris Descartes University , Sorbonne, Paris Cite , Paris , France , 4 Ho tel-Dieu Hospital, CIMS (Centre d'Investigations en Me decine du Sport), AP-HP (Assistance Publique-H opitaux de Paris) , Paris , France Purpose: Achievement of athletes' performances is related to several factors including physiological, environmental and institutional cycles where physical characteristics are involved. The objective of this study is to analyse the performance achieved in professional sprint and middle-distance running events (100 m to 1500 m) depending on the organization of the annual calendar of track events and their environmental conditions. Methods: From 2002 to 2008, all performances of the Top 50 international athletes in the 100 m to 1500 m races (men and women) are collected. The historical series of world records and the 10 best annual performances in these events, amounted to a total of 26,544 performances, are also included in the study. Results: Two periods with a higher frequency of peak performances are observed. The first peak occurs around the 27.15th 60.21 week (first week of July) and the second peak around 34.75th 60.14 week (fourth week of August). The second peak tends to be the time of major international competitions (Olympic Games, World Championships, and European Championships) and could be characterized as an institutional moment. The first one, however, corresponds to an environmental optimum as measured by the narrowing of the temperature range at the highest performance around 23.2563.26uC. Conclusions: This is the first study to demonstrate that there are two performance peaks at a specific time of year (27th and 34th weeks) in sprint and middle distance. Both institutional and ecophysiological aspects contribute to performance in the 100 m to 1500 m best performances and define the contours of human possibilities. Sport institutions may take this into account in order to provide ideal conditions to improve the next records. - Funding: The authors thank the Centre National de Developpement du sport and the Ministry of Health, Youth and Sports for financial assistance. The funders had no role in study design, data gathering, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The corresponding author had full access to all data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Since the beginning of the modern Olympic era (1896), the best performance (BP) are in a process of exponential growth which now seems to have reached its limits [1]. Performance is often understood as a very broad term which involves many components such as : psychomotor abilities, flexibility and joint stiffness, muscle strength and power [2]. Athletes, like any living organism, depend on physiological regulations that respect the nycthemeral, seasonal or vital cycles [3]. There are variations in physiological factors such as maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max) or concentrations of melatonin on the basis of seasonal rhythms [4]. This seasonal rhythmicity has been demonstrated for certain factors such as mood [5], lung function [6] and the core body temperature. It is also observed in the physical activity of the general population, which tends to be higher during summer [7 9]. Chan and colleagues (2006) [9] found a significant change in physical activity in the general population, as number of steps walked per day being related to temperature, precipitation and wind speed. There is a limited amount of research that has investigated effects of seasonality in sports on sprint athletes performances. Yet the annual schedule of events seems to be a contributing factor to performance. Comparison of track and field world records (WR) shows that performance prevails in summertime. The influence of environmental parameters on physiology (ecophysiology) partly determines the evolution of human performance [10,11]. Marathon optimal performances are set at a temperature around 10u. This performance dependency on temperature occurs not only for elite-standard athletes but for all participants also [1214]. The objective of this study is to compare the date and temperature of the BP in sprint and middle distance races (100 m to 1500 m) for men and women during the annual calendar of international competitions, and observe their evolution over the Olympic era in order to assess the environment and scheduling effects on sprint and middle distance running performances. Data Collection From 2002 to 2008, all performances of the Top 50 international athletes in running events ranging from 100 m to 1500 m races for men and women were collected from the official website of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) [15]. For each event, data collection includes: full name of the athlete, the completion date and place of the competition: 23,746 performances are collected, 11,813 from males and 11,933 from females. Performances are divided into five categories defining the performance as a percentage in relation to the BP obtained at the event. The percent categories (PC) used were: [95 96%], [9697%[, [9798%[, [9899%], [99100%]. Within each group, performances were collected according to the competition type: (i) major competitions (the Olympic Games (OG), World Championships (WC), European Championships (EC) and American selections (US)), (ii) the international circuit represented by the Golden League and (iii) other meetings. Date, place and name of the athlete when WR were set for the same distances between 1952 and 2010 are collected (181 WR) and the performances of the top 10 male and female 100 m race are gathered from 1891 to 2008, representing 2,617 performances. Temperatures for each city, at the time of the competition, are recorded from 97 to 100 PC in 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m and 1500 m. In order to improve resolution, half PC are defined to study temperature density: [9797.5%], [97.598%], [9898.5%], [98.599%], [9999.5%], [99.5100%]. T (...truncated)