A year of running-research: Some reflections

Off-road running.

Immersive, multi-sensory, thrilling, aliveness, embodiment, tough, technical, engaged, relaxing, adventurous or even, ‘natural’. But 12 words doesn’t quite do the activity its full justice…

A single word simply cannot capture the true essence of how it feels and what it means to go for a run off the road and on some variable more natural terrain. I struggled to capture and represent this phenomena in a 12,000 word dissertation. It was a week before my dissertation deadline and I was 3000 words over the limit but I felt connected to what I had written. It felt cruel to ‘cut’ the “waffle” and the material I had collected through a lot of enjoyable research around the activity.

Some ‘findings’

Place is important. In an ever moving world, places are changing, getting reformed and re-interpreted.

Place attachment wasn’t fixed but was instead an affective collection of connections to experiences and environmental features, co-produced and experienced through movement. In several of my research runs I noted how I felt incredibly connected to other people, despite being totally on my own, I felt as though the landscape intertwined with my own memories of trail runs to connect me to others and their thoughts or experiences

While on a trail run, one is always somewhere but this somewhere is always on the way to somewhere else; places move with the body. Human existence is not totally place bound but is instead constituted through place binding as existence unfolds not in specific places but along paths. Each mover (in this case a runner) along a path lays a trail where many movers meet and these paths or trails become entwined as the life and experience of each becomes bound up with the other.

Moving through places, the body’s senses become attuned to particularities, interacting with the mind and muscles to connect the body to the physical world in an affective place-binding journey.

Being out in the open often contrasted with the presence of trees for many runners. The surrounding trees or forests that several go-alongs took place in often provided feelings of happiness, shelter and security for runners. A special connection to trees was apparent with several participants. Trail runners connect to place through physical markers affected by experiential, performative and embodied feelings that become part of our runs.

If anything my research project allowed me to explore my own understandings and performances whilst out on the run. It afforded an ability to recognise the meaningful engagements that can be formed through activities often perceived as mundane leisurely practices. I feel more connected to the environments I run in and appreciate why so many others loving the sport and cite it as an escapism through outdoor relaxation. I understand too that its hard, a level of physical fitness is required to get out there and fully experience what nature can offer. But I guess thats part of the satisfaction, part of the thrill, that in a way you’ve earned this enjoyment.

Home. Security. Attachment. Immersion.

A screenshot from dissertation; a creative chapter on ‘immersion’

Performative movement in the natural environment can foster increased sensory, haptic and meaningful connections to the physical entities, memories and meanings of landscapes travelled through by trail running. My research has shed some light on how trail running affords a natural sensibility. One which can foster genuine connections to the natural environment and bring about a renewed sense of belonging for runners.

Landscape engagements can allow for understandings of our world’s meanings which are altogether less cognitive, more embodied and sensed. Movement can afford immersion. A genuine connective immersion that brings us closer to the natural world. Of course, this is possible through other forms of movement than trail running. But I hope my dissertation has demonstrated the possibilities outdoor performance or activity can offer for reawakening our senses and becoming more connected to the living world around us whilst offering an interesting, engaging avenue for enlivening cultural geographers to the world out there.

 

(All photos are my own)