Jography: Exploring the Mobilities of Road-Running

Drawing on the philosophical agendas of poststructuralism and postmodernism (Cresswell, 2001a; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011; Merriman et al, 2008), the recent fascination with all things mobile in the social sciences has challenged the ‘a-mobile’ nature of much prior research (Cresswell and Merriman, 2011); emphasising movement and hybridity rather than fixity and place (Cresswell, 2008). The mobilities turn has investigated a wide range of mobile practices yet road-running has been largely overlooked and hitherto eluded serious study. This project sought to go some way towards rectifying this lacuna by adopting the holistic mobility framework (Cresswell, 2006; 2008; 2010) in an investigation into the movements, meanings and experiences of 20 road-runners in urban Plymouth. Drawing on the recent advances in mobile methods, this project employed the methods of diaries, go-along interviews and mobile-video-ethnography to explore each facet of mobility in turn. A focus upon the routes of runners revealed that runners’ have a preference for running on main roads in a looped-shape in three main areas within the city. These runs most commonly stemmed from individual nodes within Plymouth and were often undertaken near water. The meanings of running focussed on providing new insights into two under-discussed representations, that of running as escape and running as a chore. Finally the experiences of running took as its central concern the way runners negotiated space via three key strategies: choosing a side, stepping down and slaloming. As by way of conclusion, I offered some thoughts upon how mobilities can be actively produced by mobile subjects. The main outcome of this project has been a call to action and agenda setting. No definitive answers have been provided in this study only indicative understandings and ideas concerning how such understandings need to be and should be developed.