What does "different" mean anyway?

Your traditional scientific article title is pretty drab. Simply a jumble of big words and strange acronyms to anyone outside the target audience. Yet every now and then you get a good one. Like this paper from Germany, which proudly claims that “Ultra-Marathon Runners Are Different”

Freund W, Weber F, Billich C, Birklein F, Breimhorst M, & Schuetz UH (2013). Ultra-Marathon Runners Are Different: Investigations into Pain Tolerance and Personality Traits of Participants of the TransEurope FootRace 2009. Pain practice : the official journal of World Institute of Pain PMID: 23368760

Didn’t we know that they were different? I am embarrassed to call myself an ultra-marathoner, since I have only done two road 60K’s, but my girlfriend has already labeled me “crazy”. And then there is Scott Jurek and Ellie Greenwood and Mike Morton and many many others. People who run a race that was intended for horses. People who run from the lowest point in the continental US to the highest. In mid-July! Yes, of course we knew they were different, but I guess it is good to have some scientific backing and define what “different” actually means.

To study the “different”, Dr. Freund and his colleagues picked a great recruitment spot: TransEurope Footrace. It is not an annual race and thus is not well known. It has been held in 2003, 2009 and 2012. This paper deals with 11 people who ran the 2009 version of the race, which consisted of 64 stages run over 64 days totaling 2789 miles (4487 km, it is a pretty big continent that Europe).

The researchers went for the obvious question first: "Is there a difference in pain tolerance between the runners and controls?" The way they tested this was by dipping the subjects' hands in a bucket full of ice water and asking them to rate the pain level every 10 seconds for 3 minutes. The runners reported less pain compared to controls. This seems like a straightforward experiment and a clean result. My only worry is that runners might have developed tolerance in their hands, because they are often exposed to harsh weather conditions. In other words, this result may not be due to a general tolerance to pain. Confirmation with an alternative method would have strengthened the conclusion (maybe a slap on the face? I don't know).

On the psychological end of things, the authors put the runners and the controls through a General Self-Efficacy Test (GSE) and Temperament and Character Inventory Test (TCI). Somewhat surprisingly, GSE didn't show any differences between runners and controls. People who score higher in this test are expected to overcome more challenging tasks. But again, just because the controls didn't run 2000+ miles, doesn't mean that they are slackers. They could very well be tackling tough issues in the non-exercise realm.

On the TCI test, the runners came out less cooperative, which is something I have a hard time believing. Everything I heard so far about ultra-runners point in the opposite direction. Runners scored higher in self-transcendence and self-forgetfulness categories, which is understandable.

All in all, this paper suffers from having a small number of subjects and a limited number of tests. I do understand though. Finding subjects for this kind of work can't be easy. Neither would it be easy to convince them to sacrifice their running time to go through tests.

Despite my joking early on, I do think these folks need to be studied. They clearly exhibit certain characteristics at the extreme. Maybe not all, but at least a few of these characteristics, like perseverance and adaptability, are highly desirable. Understanding what makes ultra-runners tick at a more detailed, even at a molecular level, would help us regular humans develop these skills.