Gait alterations from a prolonged run persist after four minutes

Examining the effects of prolonged running on gait mechanics is needed to understand the multifactorial nature of running injury. However, the window of opportunity to capture the effects of a sub-exhaustive prolonged run on gait is unknown. Five runners completed overground motion capture before and after a ‘typical’ sub-exhaustive treadmill run (3.9 ± 1.6 km; RPE 15.8 ± 1.1). Intra-class correlation coefficients were used to determine time to stabilization. Kinematic changes following the treadmill run persisted for 342 ± 98 sec (~4 min). We are continuing the prolonged run analysis on additional participants (i.e., N=10 additional) as well as a subset of participants completing a short, non-exhaustive (3 min; RPE ≤12) to differentiate between the effects of treadmill running from the effects of a prolonged run on overground gait patterns.