ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the female runners' lived experiences of hormonal changes, and particularly amenorrhea, as a result of their exercise and the dieting practices. It attempts to bring biology, and particularly hormones, back into conversations about the athletic female body in sport and physical culture in non-reductionist and in the non-determinist terms. Renee's comment reflects one of the dominant themes emerging from the interviews: self-discipline and the sense of control gained via their embodied and the bodily practices. As Rose noted, the biomedical power is certainly not a one way affair, rather 'it entails a dynamic set of relations between the affects of those who council and of those of the counseled'. Interestingly, all of my participants were highly critical of their interactions with medical professionals. The somatic ethics being practiced by female runners diagnosed with amenorrhea vary considerably, ranging from 'compliance with biomedical explanations, to resistance against expert forms of authority and truth'.
