The Impact of Mood on Ultrarunning Performance
by Doug Stewart
With the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) starting a week today (depending on when you read this….) I thought it would be good to look at the impact mood has on ultrarunning performance. For those racing it may help improve your race performance!
A paper from September 2021 explored how mood changes throughout an ultramarathon. The title gives the answer from the start: ‘reduced mood variability is associated with enhanced performance during ultrarunning.’
The researchers used participants in the Hardmoors 60 – a 60-mile (100km) ultramarathon in England – and investigated Total Mood Disturbance (TMB).
34 participants (15 female and 19 male (average age of 44 years)) took part and completed validated questionnaires to assess their mood.
The participants were interviewed the week prior to the race, just before the start of the race, twice during the race (at checkpoints located 35.4km and 66km into the course) and at the finish line. Measurements were taken using the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) and involved scoring items between 0 (not at all) and 4 (extremely).
The results show that certain attributes vary the week prior to the race and during it:
Source: Burgum and Smith (2021)
Unsurprisingly Fatigue drops from the week prior to just before the race (Taper) and then increases throughout the race. Meanwhile, Tension increases during the week of the race, but then dops once the race in under way.
TMB was then determined based on combining the negative emotions (Anger, Confusion, Depression, Fatigue and Tension) and subtracting the positive emotion (Vigour). This provides a summary of the mood of the athletes:
Source: Burgum and Smith (2021)
This graph shows that the week prior to an event, mood is disturbed. It then improves at the start of the race (likely due to Vigour scoring very highly pre-race) and then increases throughout the race. This is maybe not a surprise.
What is interesting is what came out when the researchers then looked at the athletes’ TMD scores and how much they fluctuated at the individual level compared to their finish time.
Source: Burgum and Smith (2021)
What can be seen is that the athletes (the dots in the graph above) with the lowest change in their TMD (so less changes in their mood) had a faster finish time, than those athletes with the higher mood variance.
One question I have is whether the faster times come about due to lower mood fluctuation, or as slower athletes were out for longer, there was greater opportunity for fluctuations in their mood?
However, I think there are some very valuable takeaways:
If you are feeling tension the week of the race, this is normal and backed by science. Once the gun goes, it will reduce. Knowing this may help reduce it a little in advance.
Aim to try and ensure you have less variability in mood (whether that be having too much Vigour pre-race, or Tension); have plans to help ensure you keep this flatter whilst trying to reduce Fatigue and Anger as the race progresses (two key components that lead to TMD variability).
Remember that emotions are impacted by physical and social factors – so elements such as pacing, fuelling, support crews – so consider how you can use these to help manage TMD as the race progresses.
References:
Burgum P, Smith DT (2021) Reduced mood variability is associated with enhanced performance during ultrarunnning. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0256888. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256888