Is there stability in the performance of elite half-marathoners?

Mabliny Thuany; Beat Knechtle; Pantelis Theodoros Nikolaidis; Thayse Natacha Gomes

doi:10.1016/j.smhs.2022.02.003

Is there stability in the performance of elite half-marathoners?

Sports Med Health Sci. 2022 Mar 4;4(2):101-104. doi: 10.1016/j.smhs.2022.02.003. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Authors

Mabliny Thuany¹, Beat Knechtle², Pantelis Theodoros Nikolaidis³, Thayse Natacha Gomes⁴

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Sports, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
² Institute of Primary Care, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
³ School of Health and Caring Sciences, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece.
⁴ Department of Physical Education, Federal University of Sergipe, São Cristóvão, Brazil.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance stability of elite half-marathoners of both sexes. The study was composed of 24 elite athletes (12 female and 12 male), ranked among the Senior World TOP20 half-marathoners, who completed a half-marathon race for at least three consecutive years. Tracking was tested using autocorrelations and Kappa Cohen. Autocorrelation revealed a significant association, but a decrease in correlation among the years in both sexes. The overall weighted kappa showed lower stability in performance for both sexes (K = 0.191 and K = -0.245) than for males. These findings suggest that both female and male elite half-marathoners showed low stability in performance during three events. Besides that, athletes with a better performance tended to present the highest performance stability. It is recommended that coaches track the developmental trajectories of the athletes to comprised the changes in performance across the years, as to provide environmental characteristics that can influence performance.

Keywords: Elite athletes; Endurance; Running; Tracking.