Last post I talked about the marathon boom, and how it’s being driven by women  http://girlwpen.com/?p=1821. Not coincidentally, I think, within the marathon community there has been a controversy about the boom, and whether or not the “slow” runners (those who take anywhere from four to seven hours to finish the race, thus running from a 10-minute to a sixteen-minute mile pace) really count as serious runners (a sixteen-minute pace is, after all, as slow as or slower than walking). See the New York Times article about the controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/sports/23marathon.html?emc=eta1 Faster runners believe that running a marathon entails running a marathon–running the entire length at a fast pace, racing rather than merely participating.  Those in the slower group argue that participation is the point, and that speed is beside the point.  They run just to finish, and to have a good time.  As marathon numbers have swelled, primarily driven by the slower runners, the more competitive runners feel like their efforts are demeaned by those who participate but, for instance, stop to have lunch along the route, and that the marathon has become a social event rather than an athletic competition.  From the competitor’s perspective, the idea that “anyone can run a marathon” detracts from their distinctiveness as serious athletes.
An historical perspective that the debate has not incorporated suggests that these two conflicting attitudes, the competitive and the participatory, have a long cultural history that earlier split along gendered lines due to the gender role expectations of the early twentieth century. Â According to historian Susan K. Cahn, in the U.S. in the 1920’s, women physical educators advocated an inclusive, participatory model of sport where the object was not to win, but enjoy oneself and better one’s health through participation. Â This was a deliberate counter to the competitive sport model practiced by male athletic leaders, for whom winning was the bottom line http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Coming+on+Strong&x=11&y=18. Â Of course there were women who were very competitive, and men who just wanted to participate, but the dominant attitude was that competition was for “real” athletes, while those who participated were wanna-be athletes at best. Â This historical perspective raises interesting questions today: Â what counts as athleticism? Â Is participation enough? Â Is sport a democratic, inclusive institution, or one based on the principles of competition, which necessarily involves exclusion? Â Both?
I would argue that there is a third alternative we might consider as well. Â While the competitive model of sport involves an internal focus while training, concentration on one’s breathing, pace, heart rate, etc., based around improving one’s performance, and the participatory model tends to involve an external focus, concentration on one’s surroundings or companions and enjoying the activity, there is an approach to sport than incorporates both of these ideas and that has links to the idea of sport as a form of spiritual practice. Â I’ll call this the immersive model of sport–one in which sport is approached as a vehicle through which, as Professor Shirl James Hoffman puts it in the foreword to Sport and Spirituality http://www.amazon.com/Sport-Spirituality-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0415404827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267635442&sr=1-1, we “shape our spirits and create alternative realities and states of consciousness” (xi). Â Sport experienced as an immersive practice can involve competition–training hard to perform your best–but it can also involve the joy of sheer participation, an appreciation of the body in movement, a way to step out of the ordinary frenzy of our daily lives filled with the barrage of things to get done and instead experience pure absorption into the activity itself, and a suspension of all other distractions. Â Known as a “flow” state, this mode of sports participation can incorporate the best of both the competitive and participatory models, and avoid some of their pitfalls. Â I’ll elaborate on this model of sport participation in my next post.
Comments 5
The spirit of running « running in before running out — March 5, 2010
[...] can’t help but respond to a link that a friend sent us. In THE XENA FILES: 3 Different Ways to Participate in Sports post yesterday on the excellent blog Girlwpen http://girlwpen.com/ Leslie Heywood writes about [...]
Caitlin Constantine — March 5, 2010
Hi Leslie - I am loving your posts on running! I especially like this one because I feel like the gender binary when it comes to sports - that men enjoy the competition while women thrive on the social aspect - is extremely limited. I know - shocking. Binary views of the world are never limited!
Most of the runners I know fall somewhere in between. We compete against ourselves AND we enjoy the camaraderie of running in organized road races. I only know a couple people who have ever qualified for Boston, but at the same time, I also don't know many who think it is acceptable to run a marathon in eight hours (and to stop and eat lunch during it? WTF? Why even bother?)
That said, I am absolutely an immersive athlete, and I always have been, even when I played basketball and volleyball in high school. Granted, I was a terrible athlete, and I was never going to earn a scholarship to a two-year vo-tech, let alone a Division I school, but it didn't matter, because what I loved was the actual act of playing. I loved to get sweaty, to be in my body, to feel the joy of running and jumping and swatting the ball and occasionally even scoring a point or two.
I feel the same way about running. I will never be Kara Goucher or Dire Tune, and I will be extremely lucky if I am ever fast enough to qualify for Boston, but it doesn't matter, because all that matters is that when I put my running shoes on, I know I am about to take part in something I love, something that makes me feel strong and calm and joyous all at once. It is truly an immersive experience!
I am very much looking forward to your next post on the subject!
Dave Martin — March 6, 2010
A friend has just drawn my attention to your posting on 3rd March : 3 Different Ways to Participate in Sports and your previous post: The Running Boom is Back, and Me With It. The way you explored and dealt with the issues was great. I think you very elegantly raised the bar by reference to a third way of participating in sport. I certainly subscribe to this view.
I can’t help but comment; my partner and I are starting to prepare for running another marathon together this year, it being my 60th year, we hope to run the New York Marathon again.
Reading both your posting and the linked article in the New York Times which sparkled off your reaction triggered a few thoughts.
When the “fast†runners moan that slower runners shouldn’t be able to participate in the same marathon and call it taking part….whose marathon is it anyway? I remember not that long ago there was controversy about whether wheelchair entrants should be allowed to participate….there was a time when women couldn’t compete at all. If folks want an elitist race, then fine... they exist already, such as the Boston Marathon which has a qualifying entry time.
I have always seen the marathon for most of us non-elite runners, not as a competitive challenge but rather where we all, as individuals, have our own goals and we all are pitting ourselves together against the time and distance – I have never experienced such camaraderie as during a marathon.
The issue also reminded me of a thought provoking article I’d read in The New Yorker back in November EITHER/OR by Ariel Levy - Sports, sex, and the case of Caster Semenya.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/30/091130fa_fact_levy?currentPage=all
……… “If sex is not precisely definable, how else might sports be organized? Theoretically, athletes could be categorized by size, as they are in wrestling and boxing. But then women would usually lose to men. Or athletes could be categorized by skill level. Almost always, this would mean that the strongest élite female athletes would compete against the weakest élite male athletes, which would be pretty demoralizing all the way around.
Another option would be to divide athletes biochemically. Testosterone is, for an athlete, truly important stuff. ………Hypothetically, according to Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics and pediatrics at U.C.L.A., those with a certain level of functional testosterone (testosterone that the body can actually make use of) could be in one group, and those below it could be in another. Although the first group would be almost all male and the second group would be almost all female, the division would be determined not by gender but by actual physical advantages that gender supposedly, yet unreliably, supplies.â€
Ironically this morning I read “In this culture, at least, it seems like we never forget that we’re individuals, but we’re constantly forgetting that we are all one. Our emphasis on individuality has framed itself so that only certain human individuality is important thus making it acceptable to destroy other ‘less important’ aspects of the whole. “
How apt!
Dave
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Boaz Aviram — March 6, 2010
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