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

Abstract

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.