Digging in: the sociological phenomenology of ‘doing endurance’ in distance-running

In this chapter we draw on a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of endurance and the lived distance-running body: sociological phenomenology, which to date has been relatively under-utilised in sports studies generally. Given the highly embodied nature of endurance running as lived experience, the phenomenological quest to uncover and explore the essential structures of embodied experience seems highly applicable. Here, for those unfamiliar with its tenets, we introduce a ‘sociologized’ variant of the phenomenological approach (see Allen-Collinson, 2011b, for a discussion), and situate our own research within the context of a literature we have been developing on the sociological phenomenology of distance running (Hockey, 2005; Hockey & Allen-Collinson, 2007; Allen-Collinson, 2009; Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2011; 2013). We then describe the autoethnographic and autophenomenographic project on distance-running, from which our data derive. The project’s findings are subsequently theorised, drawing upon insights from sociological phenomenology, and phenomenologically-inspired work, such as that of Drew Leder (1990). Leder’s (1990) notion of corporeal ‘dys-ease’ is particularly apposite in exploring ‘doing endurance’ in distance running, where the body is at times brought acutely and forcibly to the forefront of consciousness in training and racing, during experiences of ‘intense embodiment’ (Allen-Collinson & Owton, 2014). Enduring, as a particular mode of being-in-the-world is not just an individual phenomenon, but is shared by and communicated between distance runners, constituting an interactional subcultural practice.