r/trailrunning

Boa noite a todos,

Gostava de vos apresentar uma solução que criei para um problema que via em muitos atletas, principalmente de trail.

Via muita gente a preparar grandes provas com papel, Excel e vários separadores abertos ao mesmo tempo para conseguir organizar tudo. E daí veio a ideia: porque não criar uma plataforma onde fosse possível ter tudo no mesmo sítio?

Nos últimos meses eu e um colega temos estado a desenvolver essa plataforma com esse objetivo. Chama-se Race Track Analytics e foi publicada esta semana. Ainda devem existir alguns bugs pequenos e estamos também completamente abertos a opiniões e sugestões.

O site tem várias funcionalidades. Podes carregar o GPX da prova e ele mostra automaticamente o percurso no mapa, o perfil de elevação, distância, ganho e perda de altimetria, tudo logo ali sem teres de andar a calcular nada à mão.

Depois consegues analisar a dificuldade do percurso, identificar os troços mais exigentes, perceber onde vais ter de gerir o esforço e onde dá para recuperar. A ideia é mesmo essa: em vez de teres um Excel com tempos, outro separador com meteorologia, outro com o mapa do Strava ou qualquer outra coisa, tens tudo centralizado.

Também dá para ver a meteorologia prevista para a zona da prova, o que ajuda bastante a decidir equipamento e estratégia de hidratação. Quem faz trail sabe que uma prova com 30 °C ou com chuva é completamente diferente.

Outra funcionalidade que adicionámos foi a parte da nutrição, para ajudar a planear o que vais comer e beber ao longo da prova consoante a duração e o esforço, que é uma das coisas que muita gente acaba por descurar e depois paga durante a corrida.

Para quem treina com outras pessoas ou tem treinador, criámos também uma área de equipas. O treinador consegue acompanhar atividades, ver a preparação dos atletas e gerir o grupo todo no mesmo sítio.

A maior parte das funcionalidades é gratuita e existe depois uma versão Pro para quem quiser análises mais avançadas, mas a ideia nunca foi fechar tudo atrás de um paywall.

Como disse, foi lançada esta semana, por isso ainda estamos a corrigir detalhes e a limar algumas coisas. Quem quiser experimentar e deixar feedback é mais que bem-vindo. Qualquer opinião, crítica ou ideia ajuda imenso nesta fase.

Deixo o link em baixo e fico atento aos comentários.

Obrigado!

RaceTrackAnalytics

Typical Skye, wet, boggy, challenging and spectacular all wrapped up together.

Beginner/intermediate friendly. Do as many loops as you’d like. Sooooo beautiful

Last month I posted here recruiting for my PhD study developing an acute and chronic scale measuring mental fatigue in sport. First off, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to fill it out. The responses have been brilliant and a few of the comments made me see the problem through a different lens, especially as my background is in climbing and weightlifting so seeing it from a runners perspective was really helpful. A few people also asked how the questionnaire was put together and what this round is doing, and I should have laid that out from the start. Full references are in a separate comment below.

Where the items came from

The scale is being developed following Boateng et al.'s (2018) framework for scale development, which is a detailed primer explaining how to develop and validate scales in behavioural and health science. The starting point was a wide search of the literature. I pulled items from two main sources: 16 measures of mental fatigue and mental load used in the general adult population (identified through Diaz-Garcia et al.'s 2021 systematic review), and 19 measures used in sport-specific contexts (identified through my own systematic scoping review of mental fatigue and mental load measurement tools in sport. I am looking to publish this soon). On top of that I added items developed from my readings of six papers that describe how athletes experience mental fatigue and what drives it (Van Cutsem et al., 2017; Martin et al., 2018; Pattyn et al., 2018; Russell et al., 2019; Gantois et al., 2020; Habay et al., 2021). That gave me a pool of 462 items.

Those 462 items went through a deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) at the latent level to identify the underlying domains, which reduced the pool to 105 items. During a team review with my supervisors, it became clear there were two distinct constructs that needed separating: acute mental fatigue (the momentary state right now, before or after a session) and chronic mental fatigue (the longer pattern that builds over weeks and months). The five themes that came out of the analysis were inputs contributing to mental fatigue, motivation, perception of effort, decisional balance, and the influence of mental fatigue on behaviour.

Expert review with subject matter experts

The next step was getting six subject matter experts to review every item. The panel was deliberately mixed: researchers in mental fatigue, an exercise physiologist, a cognition specialist, someone with scale development expertise, a professional coach, and an athlete as end-users. Putting athletes on the panel was important, because items that make perfect sense to experts can land badly when you try to use them in a training context. Each item was rated on appropriateness, representativeness, and clarity using Hardesty and Bearden's (2004) sum-score decision rule, and items that didn't make the cut got removed. Some items were reworded based on expert feedback (for example, "tiredness" was changed to "fatigue" across several items to keep the construct clean). That process left 43 items for acute and 51 for chronic, which is what's currently being distributed.

What this round is doing

This round is about dimensionality and item reduction phase. The data from everyone who fills it in goes into an exploratory factor analysis, which takes that wide item pool and works out which items group together and load cleanly onto meaningful factors, then cuts the ones that don't. The finalised scale is a much shorter and captures the underlying structure without the redundancy. The goal is well under 20 items total across both acute and chronic. Although I am at the mercy of the analysis as to what the final number will be.

As such the current length isn't an accident. Starting wide and cutting based on real participant data is the only way to do this properly. But I'm fully aware that it makes the experience heavier than the final tool will be, and that's a trade-off I'm asking participants to accept to achieve high rigour.

I received feedback that some items felt unclear or hard to map onto their own experience. I want to be upfront that this is useful information. Items that don't sit naturally with athletes tend to be exactly the ones that don't load cleanly in factor analysis. So, they should be removed through this process naturally.

What comes after

Once the analysis is complete and the scale is reduced, there's one more round after this focused on validation, looking at concurrent validity (does the new scale correlate with established measures of mental fatigue) and test-retest reliability (does it produce stable results across time). I'll be writing this round up as a paper either way, and I'll come back here with a summary including which items survived and what the final scale looks like. Happy to answer questions in the comments on the methodology or mental fatigue research in general too.

For anyone who hasn't filled it in yet, the link is below. It takes 10-15 minutes to complete and will help us get 1 step closer to understanding how work impacts the sport we love.

https://derby.questionpro.eu/t/AB3vCJoZB3waVr

Cheers.

Cam

Just back from a trail run in North Mallorca, clambering up my first mountain. Such a beautiful landscape, and so many goats 🐐

Still learning all the things the Mission 1 can do. It’s so much fun to experiment with. Handled the early morning low sun and dappled light like a champ. Bonus burst mode slow mo finale!

Sheltered run, with my girl, this morning.

Mid run treat for her too!

(Quantocks, Somerset,UK)

Did my longest trail race and distance yesterday. Carpathia Trails 36k (Leaota race) near Brasov with the start at the Cheile Gradistei resort.

I've been into hiking and trekking for years, so I thought I had a decent idea of what to expect. But trail running is a completely different breed. The first 20K felt manageable, but the last 10K absolutely humbled me. My legs were cramping up, every climb felt steeper than the last, and it became more of a mental battle than a physical one. At several points, I just wanted it to be over, but I kept putting one foot in front of the other until I crossed the finish line.

• Distance: 30K
• Elevation Gain: 1,609m
• Elapsed Time: 7:33

The moment I finished, all the pain suddenly felt worth it. The sense of accomplishment was unlike anything I've felt after a road race. As much as I enjoy road running, this was on another level. The mountains, the terrain, the constant challenge, and the community made the entire experience so much more rewarding.

I was going down a steep hill when out of nowhere my left calf started cramping. I was lucky enough I was on a not so steep segment of the trail, since I was going down fast so somehow I managed to stop and sit down for a bit. It lasted maybe 3-5 min I took some electrolyte fastchews and went down slower. Just when I thought I was alright my right calf began cramping too. Never in my whole life doing trail I’ve experienced this… I was shocked and a bit worried. I thought it might have been dehydration, but I had taken plenty of water and electrolytes beforehand and during my run. The only thing that changed in my routine was that I tied my shoes a bit tighter, could that have been the reason?

Nevertheless my trail session turned into a hike after that I was alright.

So this is my dog, on our evening run in our 'back yard', in his happy place. So obviously this is me in my happy place as well :)

After moving to another village, I couldn't get into the rhythm of working out anymore. I used to go to Crossfit 3-4 times a week, but there isn't any around here, signed up for Hyrox, but the atmosphere is too competitive, and quite intimidating so it just didn't really work out.
So after 1,5 years of not doing 'anything' I ended up asking my brother if he was up for a run 31st of January 2027, a trail run, at my home town (he's a runner, doing (half) marathons and recently picked up trail running). So here we are. We've committed to a 16km run in 7 months time. Finally this gave me the motivation to go out.

What it showed me already:

• happy relaxed and super chill walk-runs: i do an evening walk and just decide to go run most of it. I can keep up a long time being around 135-150bpm (max HR is 186). I stop because of small sensitiveness in knees, or just because my dog is taking a look time sniffing around, or i see a nice bird.
• Suprised and REALLY HAPPY that this is just equally, even more, fun than just hiking. I'm huge fan of hiking. And I live in the middle of nature, at the beach. This is just adding so much more hapiness to my daily walks. I really really can't believe i'd never ever thought to do this earlier on...
• Surprised my (thru)hiking background adds a lot already: ankle stability, not afraid to just place my feet anywhere, trust in the movement, and i guess also a bit on endurance.
• I even attended Hyrox workouts twice weekly. Now I have some 'external' motivator, and told myself it's ok to pace these workouts, I'm able to motivate myself and find it lots more enjoyable

I'm going to continue on my happy relaxed walk-runs until I notice knees and all the other parts of my body really get used to the longer distances, and then probs will start with a bit of a more structured training, but really, maybe I just continue on like this.

Thanks for all the inspiration on this sub! Hope to be back end of Jan. with a report of my first ever trail race :D

I just got a Coros Pace Pro and was tracking a run. I wad surprised to see my heart rate is almost flat the whole time even if my pace varies.

What does this mean?

I wonder if it means I’m not pushing myself enough.

I’m torn between these two colorways. Which one are you guys diggin’ more? Kanagawa (top), Ash (bottom)