Research Article The Impact of Strenuous Group Physical Activity on Mood States, Personal Views, Body Composition, and Markers of Myocardial Damage in Overweight/Obese Adults: The ‘‘Step-by-Step Italy’s Coast to Coast’’ Trek Claudia Mazzeschi, Natalia Piana, Daniela Capezzali, Antonella Mommi, Cristina Aiello, Michela Gatti, Giannermete Romani, Livia Buratta, Dalila Battistini, Giovanni Nasini, Elisa Reginato, Lorena Urbani, Chiara Pazzagli, Carla Ferri, Giuseppe Ambrosio, and Pierpaolo De Feo Healthy Lifestyle Institute, CURIAMO, University of Perugia, Via Giuseppe Bambagioni 19, 06126 Perugia, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Pierpaolo De Feo; pierpaolodefeo@gmail.com Received 7 December 2013; Accepted 22 June 2014; Published 22 July 2014 Academic Editor: Claudio Mafeis Copyright © 2014 Claudia Mazzeschi et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. It is clinically relevant to understand whether it is safe to recommend to trained overweight/obese people long-distance treks and whether these experiences could have a negative psychological impact or become even dangerous exposing the trekkers to the risk of clinically silent myocardial damage. To answer these questions we have performed a quantitative/qualitative study comparing the changes in mood proiles, personal views, body composition, and plasma troponin levels of 40 overweight/obese subjects with those of 36 healthy normal weight subjects ater the participation in a trek of 388km from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian seas trek: the “Step by step...Italy’s coast to coast”. he results of this study demonstrate that long-distance treks are a safe activity for trained overweight/obese people which should be recommended because they improve mood, health status, and the relationship of participants with themselves and with the regular practice of exercise with efects similar to those obtained by healthy normal weight subjects. 1. Introduction It is unknown what is the impact of strenuous exercise on overweight or obese people and whether related changes in body weight might inluence the mood proiles and the views on physical activity. Potentially, strenuous exercise, like that experienced to perform long-distance treks, might be a stressor agent with a potential negative impact on mood state, views on physical activity [1–3], and the health condition. In this regard, it has been shown that even healthy marathon runners or triathlon athletes during strenuous competitions might experience increments in plasma troponin concentra- tions suggesting silent myocardial injury [4, 5]. It is clinically relevant to understand whether it is safe to recommend to trained overweight/obese people long- distance treks and if these experiences could have a negative psychological impact or become even dangerous exposing the trekkers to the risk of clinically silent myocardial damage. At present, it is not possible to answer this question because there are no studies reporting the impact of strenuous physical activity on mood states, personal views, and markers of myocardial damage in overweight/obese persons. For these reasons, we have performed a quantitative/qualitative study comparing the changes in mood proiles, personal views, body composition, and plasma troponin levels of 40 overweight/obese subjects with those of 36 healthy normal weight subjects ater the participation in a trek of 388 km Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2014, Article ID 854129, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/854129