ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the enduring ideas in the long distance runnings. The birth and growth of events like Tough Mudder, the Warrior Dash, the Neon Run series, and new and more challenging ultramarathons, along with new forms of running clubs, speaks to the fascination people have with running and the way that new means of testing human endurance are produced. Bordo contended that the 'cultural interpretation is an ongoing, always incomplete process, and no one gets the final word'. Examining over 70 years of distance running training practices, Mills and Denison argues that the scientific knowledge and dominant notions of individual responsibility and self-sufficiency circulating in the larger social context limited ideas about how coaches train distance runners to endure. Collaborating with other scholars on a project where such an analytic framework is established from the outset, provides the new and interesting insights on physically active and moving bodies historically and in the contemporary times.
