Research has shown that, while riding a stationary bike, people judged a 30‑second time interval about 9 percent too quickly. Their perception of time became distorted during exercise such that the external clock felt sluggish while their legs were flying.
Andrew M. Edwards, a sports scientist at Canterbury Christ Church University, led the research alongside collaborators at the University of Groningen and Vrije University of Amsterdam.
Time is not time during exercise
Exercise distorts time perception, the everyday sense of how long an event lasts. Classic scalar expectancy theory proposes an internal pacemaker that fires pulses; count more pulses and a moment seems longer, count fewer and it shrinks.
During intense effort, sensory input and body signals grab attention, widening the attentional “gate” so extra pulses slip through and lengthen our subjective perception of time.
A complementary striatal beat frequency model points to oscillations in the basal ganglia, a deep brain hub that also coordinates movement and reward, as a neural metronome.
Neuro‑imaging shows overlapping circuits for timing and reward anticipation, hinting that the same dopamine‑rich loops flag both pace and pleasure.
Inside the 4‑kilometer pedal test
Thirty‑three recreational riders, none of them cyclists by trade, completed three four‑kilometer trials on a high‑precision ergometer.
Between sprints they estimated 30 seconds five times, giving a snapshot of the brain’s stopwatch before, during, and after exertion.
“There was no difference between exercise conditions or time points,” the authors reported, emphasizing that competition alone did not reset the internal clock.
Whether they rode solo, chased a passive avatar, or tried to beat an active opponent, the time warp held steady.
After finishing, their estimates snapped back to real‑world accuracy within two minutes, underscoring how tightly the illusion is tied to effort.
Your brain during exercise
Heart rate climbs, lactate builds, and muscle pain demands focus, pushing athletes toward an associative mindset where every pedal stroke is monitored.
Laboratory work with treadmill runners shows that as rate of perceived exertion climbs from “somewhat hard” to “very hard,” seconds feel even longer.
The surge in afferent signals may flood cortical networks that normally keep temporal information tidy, so the brain logs more sensory events per unit of real time.
Electrophysiological studies link this overload to elevated activity in supplementary motor areas, cerebellum, and ventral striatum, regions repeatedly flagged in timing meta‑analyses.
Because those circuits also help schedule movements, distorted timing could feed back into pacing errors, explaining why novice cyclists often start too hard and fade.
Competition, exercise, and time perception
Many coaches assume that racing a foe distracts athletes from discomfort, shortening perceived time.
The cycling data upend that idea: even when volunteers tried to outsprint a rival and actually finished about 1 seconds quicker, their timing errors matched the solo run.
“More work has to be done to further unravel the role of external stimuli, exercise intensity, and duration on the perception of time during exercise,” wrote Edwards and colleagues, calling for studies that vary course length and sport.
Visual pacers such as Wavelight technology – a ring of LED lights that guides record attempts in track meets – may offer a stronger cue; analysts note that Joshua Cheptegei’s 10,000‑meter world record was set while chasing the moving lights, which kept every kilometer within 0.8 seconds.
Yet even lights cannot erase internal noise completely, so athletes must still learn to calibrate effort against split times displayed on the track or bike computer.
What have we learned?
Knowing that exercise stretches moments can shape better pacing strategies. Endurance coaches often teach swimmers to rehearse key distances with a metronome or music track so the internal clock anchors to an external beat.
Cyclists can glance at distance markers rather than time, because distance cues remain objective even when seconds feel elastic.
For high‑intensity interval training, pre‑programmed timers remove guesswork, preventing premature burnout caused by overestimating rest breaks.
Recreational exercisers may welcome the illusion, after all, a half‑hour ride that feels like forty minutes makes the gym session feel “worth it.”
Unanswered questions and next steps
Does the illusion scale with workout length, or plateau after the first surge of pain signals? Would elite athletes, who spend years refining interoceptive awareness, show smaller distortions, or merely learn to ignore them?
Brain‑stimulation studies could temporarily mute motor cortex or cerebellum activity to test causal roles in the effect.
Wearable neuroimaging, now light enough for treadmill use, might map the live interplay between stride cadence, pulse counts, and subjective time.
Until then, the best takeaway is pragmatic: trust the stopwatch, not your feelings, when pacing the final lap or last hill climb.
The study is published in Brain and Behavior.
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