Impact of the Behobia-San Sebastian Race on Promoting Healthy Lifestyles

This research is designed find out to what extent runners in a long-distance race adopt healthy lifestyles as a result of their participation in the event. The race chosen was the Behobia-San Sebastian which has more than 30 000 participants and is well established among fun runners. The hypothesis is that the runners' participation favourably impacts their self-perception of health and changes in their lifestyles. To test it, a questionnaire was administered to 8115 Guipuzcoans registered for the 50th edition of the race. The results indicate that among these runners self-perception of health improves and that the participants take greater care of their diet and smoke and drink alcohol less. It can be concluded that the Behobia-San Sebastian Race is a driving force for sustainable change in the lifestyle of its participants as well as a contributing factor towards greater and better health.