Beyond the elite athlete: coupled climate-related health burdens in trail ultramarathon running

Vivienne P. Groner 

Climate change is simultaneously threatening the physical safety and psychological wellbeing of people who recreate outdoors, and degrading the ecological integrity of the natural environments in which they do so. Understanding who bears the greatest burden, which benefits are lost, and how adaptation strategies may shift rather than resolve risk is one of the defining challenges of planetary health. Yet the research systems needed to study these dimensions together, at global scale, and in real-world outdoor conditions, remain underdeveloped. I argue that trail ultramarathon running offers a powerful model system to address this challenge. It is a globally distributed, increasingly popular, data-rich sport in which hundreds of thousands of demographically diverse participants traverse the world's most climate-sensitive ecosystems under conditions of prolonged physiological and psychological stress. I develop a framework with three interlinked dimensions that should inform governance and adaptation: thermal burden inequality between elite and non-elite participants; erosion of nature-based wellbeing through environmental degradation and event disruption; and safety-ecology trade-offs generated by adaptation strategies. In this sense, trail ultramarathon running is more than a sport facing climate disruption. It is a proxy for the broader human experience of living in a warming world, one defined by unequal exposure, unequal capacity to adapt, and the gradual erosion of the natural conditions that make outdoor life healthy and meaningful. Building the evidence base to govern these linked burdens is therefore both a scientific priority and a planetary health imperative.