Paper short abstract:

Drawing on 50 narrative interviews with recreational runners in Estonia and the content analysis of dozens of runners’ blogs, I suggest that long-distance running as a bodily experience fits with various class-specific ideals of self-discipline, motivation, success, and perseverance.

Paper long abstract:

Like many other countries, Estonia is currently experiencing a fitness boom and the growing popularity of recreational long-distance running is one of its most notable aspects. Since the turn of the millennium, the number of Estonians running at least one marathon a year has grown nearly twentyfold. This paper seeks to understand the corollaries of this process and links of the marathon boom to broader socio-economic and value changes in the country, as well as to novel ideals of health, wealth, and success. Drawing on fifty narrative interviews with recreational runners and the content analysis of dozens of runners' blogs, I will pay particular attention to "runner's bodies." Bourdieu's notion of "bodies for others" is helpful for making sense of the runners' perception of their bodies in the changing social and economic environment. As I will suggest, long-distance running as a bodily experience is related to middle-class identity. According to Bourdieu, a sport is more likely to be adopted by a social class if it does not contradict that class's relation to the body at its deepest and most unconscious level. Recreational marathoners subject their bodies to regular physical strain, which corresponds to various class-specific ideals of self-discipline, motivation, success, and perseverance. Constant self-monitoring and measurement by means of modern technology are also increasingly common. Such technologically enhanced and informed "optimisation of the self" constitutes a new form of biopolitics that fits with the neoliberal values of efficiency and productivity.