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Description
The increase in the practice and social importance of running in recent years in most European countries has attracted the attention of social scientists in sport. Most of the existing social research has focused on identifying the profiles of runners, the reasons for running and the benefits it provides. Less frequent have been studies that try to explain its meanings and how it is closely related to other processes of social life. The aim of this paper is to explore the cultural meanings that coalesce and shape the social universe of running from the perspective of its practitioners. The study is based on five focus groups and sixteen semi-structured interviews conducted in the city of Valencia, Spain, with different types of runners. The results point to the existence of four antinomies or bipolar descriptors of the social meaning of running: group vs. solitary, sacrificial vs. enjoyable, healthy vs. harmful and committed vs. flexible. These antinomies present opposing meanings of running which, however, do not necessarily imply exclusionary options but, rather, constitute criteria for making legitimate choices with which to order the multiple possibilities that exist for each individual. The conclusions point out what this type of analysis of running can contribute to the analysis of institutional change, as well as to the understanding of the processes and logics that cross the field of leisure, physical activity and sport today.
