Training, tracking, and traversing: digital materiality and the production of bodies and/in space in runners’ fitness tracking practices

ABSTRACT

The impact of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, or the digital quantification of the body for the purposes of self-betterment, on leisure has been well-established within the literature. Drawing on the experiences of ten women who self-track while running, this project extends the literature on running and place, and lived experiences of the QS, by considering the role of fitness tracking on embodiment and emplacement. First, I trouble the notion that running data is an objective replication of a runner’s activities, illustrating instead that fitness tracking is an accomplishment of human and non-human agencies and that this accomplishment does not always go according to the runner’s plan. Second, I complicate the idea that personal data collection is a disembodying act that turns visceral sensations into impersonal numbers. Instead, I argue that running data collection is often intertwined with visceral and experiential aspects of running, thus maintaining a connection between the body and the data that is collected on that body. In so doing, I contribute to digital leisure studies efforts to characterise the lived experiences of self-tracking, pointing in particular to the role of non-humans and place in those lived experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Quantified self
• running
• embodiment
• geography
• digital leisure studies

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Drs. Shannon Jette, David L. Andrews, Cheryl Cooky, Adam Beissel, and Jason Farman for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. She is also grateful to her research participants who took the time to run with her and share their stories and lives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Flagship Fellowship Programme of the University of Maryland Graduate School, the Ann. G Wylie Dissertation Fellowship of the University of Maryland Graduate School, and a doctoral award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Katelyn Esmonde

Katelyn Esmonde is a doctoral candidate in Physical Cultural Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on gender, feminism, science and technology studies, theories of physical culture, and qualitative methods. Her research has focused on the Quantified Self movement across physical culture.