MRI Findings in the Lumbar Spine Following an Extreme Winter Ultramarathon: A Case Report
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Ultramarathons are increasingly popular. Low back pain is common among ultramarathon racers, yet the effects of extreme endurance running on the lumbar spine are largely unknown. CASE PRESENTATION: We aimed to describe changes in the lumbar spine of 1 male athlete with chronic low back pain after completing a 610-km, 9-day winter ultramarathon. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was obtained before and after the race to evaluate intervertebral discs, facet joints, and paraspinal muscles from L1-L2 to L5-S1. OUTCOME: Postrace reductions in disc height and disc MRI T2 signal intensity were observed. Disc degeneration (Pfirrmann Grade IV) and early signs of disc desiccation were noted at L5-S1 and L4-L5, respectively. Increased facet joint effusion, decreased muscle cross-sectional area, and MRI fat-signal fraction were observed postrace at most levels. DISCUSSION: Minimal changes were observed in the lumbar spine of a single athlete, despite the extraordinary physiological demands of a 610-km winter ultramarathon. JOSPT Cases 2025;5(3):163-170. Epub 10 July 2025. doi:10.2519/josptcases.2025.0110
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".