ABSTRACT

Running is a fundamental human activity and holds an important place in popular culture. In recent decades it has exploded in popularity as a leisure pursuit, with marathons and endurance challenges exerting a strong fascination. Endurance Running is the first collection of original qualitative research to examine distance running through a socio-cultural lens, with a general objective of understanding the concept and meaning of endurance historically and in contemporary times.

Adopting diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to explore topics such as historical conceptualizations of endurance, lived experiences of endurance running, and the meaning of endurance in individual lives, the book reveals how the biological, historical, psychological, and sociological converge to form contextually specific ideas about endurance running and runners. 

Endurance Running is an essential book for anybody researching across the entire spectrum of endurance sports and fascinating reading for anybody working in the sociology of sport or the body, cultural studies or behavioural science.

part |59 pages

Running beginnings

chapter 2|16 pages

“Astounding exploits” and “laborious undertakings”

Nineteenth-century pedestrianism and the cultural meanings of endurance

chapter 3|15 pages

On the entangled origins of mud running

“Overcivilization,” physical culture, and overcoming obstacles in the Spartan Race

chapter 5|15 pages

Beyond Boston and Kathrine Switzer

Women's participation in distance running

part |83 pages

Running because

chapter 6|16 pages

Foot trouble

The minimalist running movement

chapter 7|16 pages

Disrupting identity

An affective embodied reading of Runner's World

chapter 8|16 pages

Boston Strong

Sport, terror/ism, and the spectacle pedagogy of citizenship

chapter 9|16 pages

Lopez Lomong

Enduring life

chapter 10|17 pages

Enduring disability, ableism, and whiteness

Three readings of inspirational endurance athletes in Canada

part |89 pages

Running bodies

chapter 11|18 pages

“My hormones were all messed up”

Understanding female runners' experiences of amenorrhea

chapter 12|15 pages

Ultrarunning

Space, place, and social experience

chapter 14|15 pages

Hitting a purple patch

Building high performance runners at Runtleborough University

chapter 15|16 pages

Digging in

The sociological phenomenology of “doing endurance” in distance-running

chapter 16|7 pages

Enduring ideas