A first scientific ultra-trail organized in France to advance research on the performance of these extreme athletes

What happens in a human body subjected to intense effort such as running 155 kilometers, 6,000 meters of vertical drop, when you are also almost deprived of sleep, and in the cold of this month of November? ? To find out, about sixty runners take part on Thursday and Friday 11 and 12 November in the first scientific ultra-trail organized in France, in Clécy in Normandy.

The start was given this afternoon. These extreme athletes, amateurs but experienced, agreed to undergo a battery of tests during the race. Tests carried out by teams of international researchers.

The first runners will complete the race in about twenty hours. It will be double for the last ones. Until then, every 26 kilometers, compulsory passage through the research center. The runners agree each time, for 45 minutes, to take tests conducted by dozens of researchers. “We measure the muscle strength of the soleus and adductors”, explains one of the scientists looking after a runner.

On the program, strength tests, vigilance test, foot scan, blood test, but also heart ultrasound. Amir Hodzic is a cardiologist at the Caen University Hospital, he is examining a participant. “This heart contracts well, we can see that it is overall a little dilated, he is a high level athlete because he arrived in less than 2h30 to complete 26 kilometers”, he describes. “We will see how the heart will increase in size or decrease”, continues the doctor.

Céline, bib 41, is still in good shape after 26 kilometers. “I find this experience very interesting. I too am a physiotherapist and I think that it can also bring me a lot in the practice of my profession where I am a lot of runners. I find that we are really lucky to to have been taken as volunteers to participate in this race. I can’t wait to see the results of the tests “, she says.

How does our body work? How does he adapt when he is running, and as the effort goes? And what about a discipline as extreme as ultra-trail? The mlack of sleep, blood sugar or body temperature are measured. “This is something that is completely new. In this environment we have very few answers to all the questions that will be asked and it gives me great pleasure to participate”, Explain Julien one of the participants in the test.

Benoit Mauvieux is the organizer of this scientific project. “On an ultra-trail we have about 40% abandonment, he says. Among the dropouts, more than a third report gastric or intestinal disturbances, which are characterized by vomiting or diarrhea. Today everyone is going a bit of their hypothesis, everyone brings their slice of cheese, their pancakes, their slice of ham, but we finally wonder if it is relevant or not, so we will follow that. “

“It’s interesting for us to have data that isn’t just taken in the lab.”

Karim N’Diaye, research engineer at the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute

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This scientific ultra-trail is multidisciplinary research and outside the walls, explains Karim N’Diaye, research engineer at the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute who is studying the effect of motivation on performance. . He wanted through this experience “to give a real desire to runners who are in a real event, with real motivation and who despite everything will perhaps give up or will perform less or perform better”, he explains. “So we compare them to themselves as the turns”, continues the researcher. Here, those who give up participate to the end of the research protocol. The point is to try to understand also why the body or the mind can sometimes give up.