Dr Josephine Perry, a sports psychology consultant and Age Group triathlete has just set up a new research project and is looking for participants, particularly long distance triathletes.

Previous research suggests that up to 20% of triathletes are at risk of exercise addiction and that the risk rises as the distances and amount of time training increase. So she is curious to see if the risk is significantly higher for long distance triathletes.

Research has also shown that, for those who don’t do much exercise, gamifying it though social media challenges or apps can make the person much more likely to stick to exercise. But what does that mean for those already committed to exercising? Anecdotally there are many stories of how triathletes find that this gamification of their exercise through sites like Strava or Garmin increase their likelihood to stick to their training, even when sometimes their health, work or family commitments will suffer as a result. This project wants to see if the data backs up these anecdotes.

Josephine is looking for runners (who have competed at Marathon distance or over), cyclists (who regularly ride 100km or over), swimmers (swimming over 5k) and triathletes (who compete at Half ironman distance or over) to complete the survey. It can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/G8XJS7J

The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete and if the athlete gives their contact details they will receive personalised results around their risk of addiction to exercise and links to information and support resources should they find that they are at risk.