Abstract
We examined how seven women ultrarunners embodied pain leading up to and during one of the longest official ultra-running distances: a 6-day ultra, where the objective was to run as far as possible. Data were generated using ethnographic observations at a training camp and at the 6 day event, and semi-structured interviews at three time points with each athlete. Data were analyzed through thematic and structural narrative analyses. We identified patterns in how the women used storytelling to convey their experiences of pain. Over the first half of the event, participants positioned their pain as a physical and psychological experience they coped with in effort to optimize their individual performance. However, as pain awareness increased and began to dominate the women’s perceptions over the last half of the event, they re-storied their pain experience as one of collective suffering across all women in the event; illuminating the role that the social dimensions of pain can play in shaping performance. They drew on each other’s strengths as women and athletes to move through and with pain to triumph together. Only after event completion, participants reflected on the joyfulness of pain; they storied pain as worthwhile in the pursuit of collective accomplishment as women athletes. In this way, the women experienced pain as an act of resistance to gendered emotion rules that position women as fragile and vulnerable. These findings contribute to our understanding of a novel biopsychosocial experience of pain by illuminating the multidimentionality and gendered experience of pain.
