Injury Pattern and Factors Affecting the Performance in Oxfam Trailwalker 2006

A total of 3844 walkers took part in Oxfam Trailwalker 2006 and 3257 (84.7%) walkers finished the 100 km trail. There were 239 nurses plus other healthcare providers providing medical support for the event; 1639 walkers had medical contact with the nurses and 699 (42.6%) visited the medical tents more than once. Most walkers attended for minor complaints with muscle cramp (60.8%), blisters (25.8%) and wounds (5.6%). Seventeen cases were sent to hospitals and only 4 were admitted. In general, successful walkers had more medical complaints: 25.5% of the successful walkers complained of muscle cramp while 19.5% of the dropouts complained of muscle cramp (p=0.0020); 13.6% of the successful walkers complained of blisters while 10.6% of the dropouts complained of blisters (p=0.0515); 4.5% of the successful walkers complained of wound as compared to 2.6% of the dropouts (p=0.0292) and 4.7% of the successful walkers had other complaints while 2.2% of the dropouts had other complaints (p=0.0074). Other complaints included a variety of conditions like vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, and tiredness. Ankle sprain was the only exception: 3.4% of the dropouts complained of ankle sprain while 3.3% of the successful walkers had ankle sprain. Nevertheless, the finding was not statistically significant (p=0.8317). It seems that higher proportions of muscle cramp, blister, wound and other complaints were found among successful walkers. The odds ratios of muscle cramp (1.15) and other complaints (1.69) were statistically significant. Among the successful walkers muscle cramp (p=0.0008), blisters (p=0.0039) and ankle sprain (p=0.0298) slowed the finishing time. Linear regression analysis showed that only blister mattered (p=0.0372).