Endurance Running A Socio-Cultural Examination [Paperback]

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 Runningis 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.

1. Critical Considerations of Runners and Running (William Bridel, Pirkko Markula, & Jim Denison)  Part 1: Running Beginnings  2. Astounding Exploits and Laborious Undertakings : Nineteenth-Century Pedestrianism and the Cultural Meanings of Endurance (Mary Louise Adams)  3. On the Entangled Origins of Mud Running: Overcivilization, Physical Culture, and Overcoming Obstacles in the Spartan Race (Gavin Weedon)  4. Charting the Development of Contemporary Endurance Running Training Theory (Joseph P. Mills & Jim Denison)  5. Beyond Boston and Kathrine Switzer: Womens Participation in Distance Running (Laura Chase)  Part 2: Running Because  6. lÑ