The researchers also analyzed how the number of races a runner competed affected their motivation. And when you practice and compete in a group, it helps impart the power to overcome obstacles that would be impossible to conquer individually, too.

“The sense of belonging to a specific society-and we all know that ultra-runners are absolutely specific-gives you the feeling of being original and extraordinary,” Waśkiewicz said. “For ultrarunners, personal records, traveling, and racing with friends is more valuable than competing with other athletes,” lead study author lead author Zbigniew Waśkiewicz, Ph.D., told Runner’s World.įinding a like-minded group also feeds their need for affiliation, too. The ultrarunning group was driven more by qualitative motivations, like life meaning and affiliation. The researchers noticed a significant difference: Shorter-distance runners rated psychological coping, self-esteem, competition, health, and weight concern as larger motivators than their ultrarunner colleagues. Then, they separated the participants into two groups: ultrarunners-those who raced longer than 50K distances-and runners who competed in shorter distances. The participants rated the importance of each motivation on a seven-point scale. They divided the motivations into four categories: psychological (life meaning, self-esteem), achievement (personal goal achievement, competition), social (affiliation, recognition), and physical (health orientation, weight concern). In the study, which was recently published in Psychology Research and Behavior Management, researchers asked 1,539 volunteer Polish runners to complete an online questionnaire about their motivations to run.

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