Triathlon Bodies in Motion: Reconceptualizing Feelings of Pain,Nausea and Disgust in the Ironman Triathlon

Abstract

This study focuses on the physical expressions and intensity of embodiment that occur in the Ironman Triathlon. More specifically, the study investigates the transformational bodily experiences taking place during Ironman competitions. Using an ethnographic approach, a total of 29 Ironman triathletes participated in the study (15 men and 14 women). Theoretically, the article focuses on how triathletes’ bodies ‘move’ between different forms of embodiment. The results show that, in the process of disciplining the body, the athletes reconceptualized feelings of pain, nausea and even disgust, making these emotionally expressive aspects of the corpus into a part of the experience and bending them towards the pleasure of reaching potential divinity. Situated in a long tradition of philosophical and sociological explorations of the transgressing and transcending body, the study interprets and understands the performing body as a site for change and utopian possibilities. Thus the study adds to existing debates on contemporary individuals’ exploration of the existential and corporeal dimensions of modernity.

Keywords

abject discipline embodiment ethnography Ironman Triathlon sacred

‘It is so profoundly physical and at times I have even felt that it’s somehow not even me.’ Using these words a young athlete tries to explain the (dis)embodied experience, when competing as an Ironman triathlete. During the race the body becomes a corporeal reality that seemingly exists somewhere between the anticipated sensation of physical fatigue and extreme bodily challenges and responses. Despite the strength-sapping effect of pain during the race, there is a new awareness of life (Le Breton, 2000). Thus, in the physicality of the athlete’s performance, the interface of the conscious self, the body and the social world somehow seem to collapse and dissolve.

Originally, the concept and idea of Ironman Triathlon competitions dates back to the 1970s in Hawaii, when a couple of athletes had an argument over what sport fostered the best, most enduring and worthy athletes (Scheppler, 2002). The argument focused on whether swimmers, cyclists, or runners were superior. The argument resulted in the idea of the Ironman Triathlon, thought to be the ultimate endurance sport, which would consist of swimming (3.86 km), cycling (180.2 km) and running (42.195 km). As a sport, the Ironman Triathlon can be situated as an extreme niche and lifestyle sport (Lamont and Kennelly, 2012; Scheppler, 2002). As such, training and competition commonly tend to merge into almost every aspect of the athlete’s everyday life, nurturing a physical ethos and lifestyle (Miloch and Lambrecht, 2006; Wheaton, 2004, 2013). Amateur sport participants in the West have relatively recently started undertaking prolonged and intensive ordeals, in which their capacity to withstand bodily suffering, pain and more is a primary concern (Le Breton, 2000). In line with this development the Ironman Triathlon has been described as one of the fastest growing niche sports in the 21st century (USA Triathlon, 2015), and according to Roethenbaugh (2014) triathlon participation has generally had an average annual growth of 15 per cent between 2007 and 2014. As a sport- and leisure-based event, however, the Ironman Triathlon is not unique in its increasing popularity. Other similar extreme (endurance) sports, such as marathons, multi-sport events, and ultra-marathons, are also becoming increasingly popular, inflicting similar hardship on their participants and their bodies (Hanold, 2010; McCarville, 2007). Nevertheless, the Ironman Triathlon can be seen as a growing extreme (niche) sport invented to test and exceed the physical and psychological limits of its participants.

There is currently a large body of literature examining the phenomenon of alternative extreme sports and bodies (Breivik, 2010; Donnely, 2006; Turner and Carnicelli, 2017; Wheaton, 2013). Over time, the labelling of these sports has changed. The more broadly used term alternative sports, for example, has gradually been refined, and the sports in question variously characterized as ‘extreme’, ‘action’, ‘lifestyle’, ‘new’, ‘postmodern’ and more. Fully aware of this ongoing scholarly discussion as to the most appropriate definition and positioning of so-called alternative sports and related conceptualizations, in this article we will apply a broad and heuristic understanding of the concept of extreme sports, aiming to discuss the Ironman Triathlon and the bodies constituted within it, not as a particular and strictly demarcated field of research, that can be neatly distinguished from other sports and physically active bodies. We will instead embrace a perspective in which the extreme (sport/body/lifestyle) is seen as a somewhat fluid and relational concept. The concept of the extreme will thus be approached as an analytical window (rather than as a sport per se) that can be utilized in order to understand different lifestyle choices, how people are using different means to find new ways to define themselves and their bodies, and the impact these choices have on their way of living. The concept of the extreme is, of course, also unconditionally tied to some sort of perception of the non-extreme or the common/ordinary/profane/normal that can be found at the other end of an imagined continuum. Engaging in the extreme, or the alternative, is thus to be understood as a process that simultaneously includes some sort of process of extrication. This process, in which to some extent bodies detach from or transgress preconceived societal boundaries, can sometimes be cherished and idealized within both mainstream and alternative extreme sports, but can at other times awaken feelings of disgust and condemnation.

Using an ethnographic approach, this study focuses on the physical expression and intensity that occur when bodies are sensorially challenged and stimulated. We are interested in how bodies are pushed towards preconceived limits and how Ironman triathletes talk about the possibilities and experiences of going beyond these limits (Hanold, 2010). The study can thus be situated in the interface between the body, the physical system of relating to and interpreting the body, and a social system in which trans-boundary expressions of bodies becomes socially acceptable. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the transformational bodily experiences taking place before, during, and after Ironman competitions. Addressing the purpose of the study, we are interested in questions such as: (1) How do the informants talk about disciplining and challenging the body perform to its limits? (2) How do they perceive and experience (the suppression of) bodily needs and bodily leakages during practice and competition? (3) Is it possible to trace aspirations to transgress the body and to transform it into something less physical?

Background

To place the Ironman Triathlon, as well as other extreme endurance sports, in context, there is currently a growing body of literature in which researchers have tried to situate the development of new training trends and the impact of different lifestyle sports on the individual. The increased interest in the Ironman Triathlon has been analysed as a consequence of the development of a particular commercial and individualized enterprise culture. Accordingly, the phenomenon has been situated within a historical conjuncture of Western individualism, global communication, entertainment industries and a growing global young, most often white/Caucasian, secular and affluent demographic (Andreasson and Johansson, 2016; Dionigi et al., 2012; Hanold, 2010; Le Breton, 2000; Wheaton, 2013). Bridel (2015), for example, connects the growth and increasing popularity of the sport with a time in history when individual responsibility and self-determination are increasingly becoming the political and social tone of governance, influencing shifting notions about health, gender and fitness among other things. As a consequence, the historical development of different endurance sports has been connected to middle-class participation and values, such as self-empowerment, personal success and non-aggressive bodily toughness (Hanold, 2010; Kusz, 2007). Researchers have also focused on the process of becoming an extreme exerciser and the impact of developing such a lifestyle on family life and social relationships (Gillespie et al., 2002; Simmons et al., 2016). Granskog (1993), for example, analyses the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon as a ritual event that transforms the lives of those who complete it. According to Granskog, the triathlete experience has a great transformational potential through which the athlete can comprehend and accept new spiritual dimensions of life. In this article, while focusing on the sociological, social and psychological dimensions of this transformational potential, and complementing this, we will pay extra attention to social and carnal aspects. Scholars have also discussed negotiations regarding time spent preparing the body for competitions and family time in terms of a time-based and strain-based leisure–work–family conflict (Cronan and Scott, 2008; Dionigi et al., 2012; Granskog, 1993, 2003; Hambrick et al., 2013; McCarville, 2007; Taniguchi and Shupe, 2014).

Becoming an Ironman triathlete involves developing an effective training regime. Currently there is a wealth of studies concerning sporting bodies. The way researchers have considered and analysed the body has also varied in different times and contexts (Whitehead, 2001). One recurring perspective found in the literature is the objectivistic standpoint, in which the body is seen/analysed as a machine and a device – that is, an entity that athletes try, by different means, to control and discipline to achieve optimal performance. Although using a machine as a metaphor for bodily performance may be intelligible in an industrial and Western context, it also has significance in a contemporary culture of consumption (Featherstone, 2000; Giddens, 1991). The sociological literature on pain, injury and the disciplining of sporting bodies has repeatedly underscored that athletes try to deal with and manage physical and psychological suffering during competition (Larsson and Fagrell, 2010; Messner, 1992; Mogensen, 2011; Young, 2004). Atkinson (2008) for example examined how triathletes learn how to relish and physically manage pain and suffering during competition. As such, triathletes’ penchant for self-imposed agony in the leisure sphere binds them together as a rather unique social conglomerate; what we might call a unique ‘pain community’ (Atkinson, 2008: 166).

In contrast, other researchers have focused on processes of embodiment, explicitly rejecting the Cartesian mind/body dualism in favour of an approach to the self that includes the body and physical experience as the basis of human experience (Cronan and Scott, 2008: 20). Characteristic in the embodiment literature is that bodies in motion are analysed in terms of being and becoming, rather than as being controlled and disciplined (Whitehead, 2001). There is today a plethora of studies analysing embodiment from different perspectives. One significant branch of this field derives from feminist research, which has aimed to shift the focus (back) to the living, physical body and to the corporeal experience of living agency (Uhlmann and Uhlmann, 2005; Young, 1990). Although this article focuses less on the gendered dimensions of embodiment, it is clearly in debt to the traditions developed within feminist critical embodiment literature (Grosz, 1994; Hanold, 2010).

Given the research focus, another branch of embodiment literature needs to be mentioned, one that particularly draws on sensory ethnographies, in line with researchers such as Wacquant (2004; see also Andreasson, 2014; Bäckström, 2011). Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015), for example, contribute to the development of research on the sensory dimensions of the body and employ a sociological phenomenology to investigate the haptic senses, in particular the sensation of heat and other intense embodiment experiences, during practice (see also Akrich and Pasveer, 2004; Sobchack, 2010). They suggest that the body can largely be understood as absent from conscious thought in everyday life, in that the mundane workings of the inner organs more or less are fully automized. When pain, illness, or for that matter even pleasure, occur, however, the body reminds us of its presence and brings, or leads the way to, a sort of corporeal aliveness (Shilling and Bunsell, 2009). In a similar vein, Le Breton (2000) used concepts, such as flow experience, to discuss how extreme exercisers enter into an intensified relational state, in which the body and mind seem to fuse and time and space become less important (see also Akrich and Pasveer, 2004; Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). This kind of deeply embodied state is described in the short excerpt at the beginning of this article, and can be understood in terms of feelings of existing that border on ecstasy, transcendence and a moment of trance, of being at one with the world. Although there is an upsurge in embodiment literature in which gendered bodies, learning bodies and lived bodies are analysed from different points of view (see Andreasson, 2014; Frick, 2011; Yarnal et al., 2006; Young, 1990), a more carnal sociology addressing sensory and transformational dimensions of sporting bodies, however, would still appear to be relatively scarce (Allen-Collinson and Owton, 2015; Sparkes, 2009).

Analytical Framework

The Ironman competition and lifestyle can be approached theoretically as a transitional and transformational bodily process. To a large extent this process can be described and analysed as a disciplinary process – involving bodily control, asceticism, strong regulations and training schedules – but it also has to be understood as a struggle to transgress bodily limitations and a will to transcend the body (Turner, 1989). In line with Falk (1994) we will look more closely at the cultural dynamics and principles of transgression, entailing the breaking down and crossing of sociocultural borders. The movement from and beyond a disciplined (and docile body in a Foucauldian sense) towards a transcendent body shatters and destabilizes some of the body’s boundaries. It becomes difficult to decide what is inside the body and what is outside.

In the 18th century, a new docile body was formed through new techniques of subjection (Foucault, 1995). This historical body may be used, transformed and improved. The construction of such a body is a matter of discipline, and of looking closer at the efficiency of bodily movements and the organization of the body in time and space. This body and the techniques used to create, refine and improve this body can be explored through contemporary extreme sports. Whereas Foucault analysed how the docile body was formed and controlled in factories, schools and prisons, we will explore how individuals in contemporary society freely choose to discipline their bodies. In doing this we will look more closely at the relationship between discipline and abjection.

Using Kristeva’s (1982) concept of abjection enables us to approach the painful but desirable transformation of the disciplined, ascetic and calculated body into a more ephemeral, transcendent body. The ‘place’ of the abject is understood here as being somewhere where meaning collapses. Human sacrifice, bodily waste, death and perversion are aspects of humanity that are considered abject in society. The abject is thus seen as something that threatens life itself, and must therefore be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border that separates the self from that which threatens the self (Creed, 1993: 65).

A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death.…No, as in true theatre, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit – cadere, cadaver. (Kristeva, 1982: 3)

The abject provokes and creates fear, anxiety and loathing. It also threatens to dissolve the self and turn the boundary between self and environment into something variable, contingent and insecure (Longhurst, 2001). Crossing bodily boundaries also involves challenging ideas of bodily fluids, shame and disgust. Fluids provoke and create a feeling of abjection, which we are both drawn to and repelled by. ‘The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them’ (Kristeva, 1982: 15).

Moving between disciplined, abject and transcendent bodies, we are also crossing boundaries and distinctions between what is considered profane and sacred. Whereas transgression can be seen as a longing for a natural state, a regression to something before culture and society, transcendence aims to leave the body behind and become something divine and pure. Thus, the ambition here is to (symbolically) look at and analyse the Ironman competition as a sacred ritual, in which the aim is to pass through a liminal state of a contingent bodily state and reach a divine and sacred position. The sacred is used here in a sense that is detached from explicitly religious references.

A deal is made symbolically with Death, with the body as currency, nature as the site of the event and Death respected only remotely, metaphorically solicited rather than approached for real, even though sometimes it arrives on the scene with a reminder that it is the one limit that can never be exceeded. (Le Breton, 2000: 6)

Theoretically we will focus on how the bodies of the Ironman men and women move between a disciplined ethos, the abject and animal body, and the sacred body. The line of development we will follow travels from pain and disgust to dignity and the spiritual nature of the human being, slowly approaching a detachment from animal avidity. As Bataille (1993) expresses it: ‘Thus, the sacred announces a new possibility: it is a leap into the unknown, with animality as its impetus’ (1993: 93). Using this rather general framework, in the findings section (‘Bending bodies and transforming the self’) we will try to zoom in on how these processes manifest and imprint themselves on the concrete and physical bodies of Ironman athletes.

Note on Epistemology and Methods

This study is based on a two-year (2015–16) ethnographic project, in which the researchers participated in the everyday life of Ironman triathletes, through semi-structured in-depth interviews and observations. Methodologically, we concur with the suggestion made by Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) that ethnography should be understood as an inclusive collection of methods through which researchers try to participate, in various ways, in the everyday life of others. Consequently, we consider it counterproductive to try to define boundaries between ethnography and other qualitative, empirically intimate, research methods. Regarding epistemology, ethnography is not seen here primarily as a method, but rather, as Anderson-Levitt (2006) argues, as a philosophy of research. Our belief is that when the aim is to investigate and understand human settings and bodies, a relational epistemology is preferable. Put differently, the understanding presented in this article is a product of an intersubjective process between the researchers and the researched subjects. Working ethnographically entails imagining social life as an incredibly dense thicket of partially independent and partially interacting social processes (Glaeser, 2005).

A total of 29 Ironman triathletes participated in the study (15 men and 14 women). As inclusion criteria, the meaning of an Ironman triathlete was applied in a broad sense. All participants had competed in a full-length triathlon, although the extent of their experience varied greatly (stretching from one completed race to 15 years of experience). The youngest participant was 21 and the oldest 52, the majority being between the ages of 35 and 45. Most of the participants (26) were amateur triathletes, although three had been professionals or semi-professionals. This richness and variety of the sampling reflects the desire to obtain a theoretically representative sample (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), which is important for the process of generating theory and achieving a wider understanding of social as well as bodily processes. As the network of participants gradually grew, we were able influence the emphasis of the sample in line with our aim of ensuring a theoretically representative sample design, while securing the robustness of the theories generated as the sampling progressed.

During interviews a semi-structured approach was used in order to ensure the inclusion of certain themes (such as sport background, body perception, training, emotions, and more), while supporting the participants in their verbal construction of a chronological narrative (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). We are, however, aware that such a narrative needs to be understood as being partly sanitized (Pink, 2009). Consequently, if the conversation moved away from a particular theme, the interviewee was not interrupted. In this sense, during fieldwork personal narratives were considered superordinate. The interviews, about one hour in length, were made individually, recorded and transcribed verbatim. The majority of the informants were interviewed on a single occasion. However, some follow-up interviews were conducted (6), and these were less structured and were done to permit clarification of any ambiguities that might have arisen. Names appearing in the text are fictitious.

Regarding observations, a key strategy was to observe various training situations with the interviewed triathletes. During fieldwork, at least once every two weeks one of the authors participated in different training sessions. This was mainly done in conjunction with running and swimming sessions with one or a couple of the interviewed triathletes. This participation in training sessions ensured that the project could benefit from the informal talks held by the athletes before, during and after the various sessions. This approach has several methodological benefits. First, it has been shown to be a reliable way to establish relationships of trust (Fangen, 2005). Second, observations make it possible for the researchers to unravel and distinguish various ordinary aspects of everyday life that might otherwise be forgotten or perceived as trivial by participants. Consequently, during the observations we were able to resume discussions initiated in the interviews and ask the participants to develop their line of reasoning. This is fully in line with the premise that people often act upon what Giddens (1986: 22) has termed practical knowledge, which is an incorporated physical ‘know-how’ that guides the individual. As this knowledge is embodied, it most often remains unspoken and could therefore be difficult to detect through interviews alone (Pink, 2009: 63–5). Third, alternating observations with both formal as well as informal interviews (in conjunction with training sessions or after completing a race) provides a form of investigator triangulation that serves not only to amplify the findings and increase validity but also adds to reliability (Banik, 1993: 49). Consequently, through multiple analyses of the data we have tried to gain a complex understanding of Ironman triathletes’ various ways of understanding and experiencing the body. When an observation/training session had ended we immediately recorded ourselves describing what had been observed. These audio observations were then transcribed.

In ethnography data collection does not happen in isolation from data analysis (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995: 205). The excerpts and observations we have presented here have therefore mainly been selected because they highlight recurring key aspects of the triathletes’ narratives and address the theoretically informed research purpose. The analysis of the data derived from verbatim transcripts, which were read repeatedly and coded into themes. We made theoretically informed notes during this process, aiming to identify shared understandings and similar phrases, abstracting their meanings in order to be able to contextualize the excerpts in relation to each theme and to further develop our theoretical toolbox (Aspers, 2007). Then we reread the excerpts in each document, attempting to check and refine our understanding of the data as well as our theoretical framework and existing body of knowledge.

Bending Bodies and Transforming the Self

In this section we will present the findings of our study, discussing how triathletes’ bodies move between different body perspectives or forms of embodiment. Prior to developing our line of reasoning regarding these approaches and experiences of the body, a few clarifications are in order. First, there is no linear development in the process of experiencing an Ironman challenge. Instead we would like to suggest that the perspectives and experiences involved in the process continuously intersect and that the athletes approach them in a reflexive and varied manner over time and space. Second, we suggest that these perspectives are reasonable as they demonstrate how body, culture and society can be regarded as intertwined aspects of a transformative physical and psychological experience of exhaustion, joy, pain and guilt during exercise.

Disciplining the Reluctant Body (Gearing Up)

The process of preparing oneself to compete in an Ironman Triathlon can, of course, be understood in different ways. Repeatedly underscored in the narratives, however, is the gradual bodily trajectory, described as a process through which the body is prepared to meet/endure the physically demanding challenges that come with an Ironman Triathlon competition. Below, Pete, who has been competing for about ten years, tries to explain how his perspective on sport and body has changed over time. Central to his narrative, which is representative of the informants, is how feelings of pain, exhaustion and fatigue are gradually reconceptualized, and how preconceived bodily limits are challenged.

If you look at triathlon competitions, you realize that the swimming is pretty much just a passage. It’s after that you really start tearing the body. I’ve had years when it’s been just fine on the bike as well, but other times you only come some 50–60 kilometres before your back or neck starts hurting. But it’s very much about your mental status. When you are lining up for a competition, you will need to know – have the wisdom – that this will hurt, with certainty. But it’s just a good old friend who comes to visit. You just go on, keep on running. I don’t know, but there’s probably no one who’s completed an Ironman who will tell you the last 20 kilometres was cosy and nice. You need to force your muscles to continue. You know, when you’ve been on the track for ten to twelve hours at some point you will ask yourself ‘What the hell am I doing?’ But the thing is, you have to turn the pain and all of that into a part of the competition itself. Pain is part of the experience. (Pete, 45)

This kind of self-imposed agony, the surgically rational and emotionally distant/anaesthetized approach to training, is repeatedly underscored in the narratives, and resonates with performance-oriented sport science literature as well, of course. Endurance training is thus constituted to shock the biological body beyond different comfort thresholds. The body is controlled, disciplined and measured for predictability and for outcome-oriented meritocratic pursuits (Atkinson, 2008). Constantly lingering in the narrative, then, is the Cartesian separation of body and soul/mind. Pete, for example, became aware over time of the extent to which he could endure pain and physical rigor. He learned how to decipher and re-shape different physical experiences, and came to appreciate the unpleasant quality of pain and suffering to some extent. Or, as another interviewee put it: ‘I enjoy it, but it still really hurts – it hurts, and there is pain and agony, and it feels good.’

When pain barriers are overcome, bodies adapt to the rigors of Ironman Triathlon training, which means that the athlete can engage in the liminality of the body. This becomes obvious in the next excerpt:

I was nervous about my energy levels. I kept losing weight, especially going on these heavy sessions – three days in a row. I noticed I had to stop myself, and it still wasn’t enough. I became dizzy during practice. Yeah, and I realized that my body wasn’t really up to the task. And it was too late to do anything about it except try to adjust my diet in the last few weeks before the race. Also, I had these stomach problems, which made me wonder, ‘What kind of supplement will work?’ So I made up this ‘engineering plan’ about salt, supplements, carbs, and so on, that I need to ingest by the hour. And it worked. I had these salt tablets calculated exactly, you know. So, when I finished the race I started freezing but I did not feel malnourished. (Josie, 43)

By learning about nutrition, how to feed the body/machine, and how to change the constitution of the body, Josie could formulate an ‘engineering plan’. She became her own expert, constantly monitoring and calculating the progress, setbacks, failures and preparedness of flesh, muscles, body energy, and more (cf. Foucault, 1988). From a Foucauldian perspective, the self-control and engineered lifestyle of the body being expressed can certainly be said to exemplify how Josie gradually, through processes of rationalization and self-care, turned her life into a personal work of art and project (Foucault, 1988; Markula and Pringle, 2006).

Departing from the concept of the docile body, Foucault shows how dominant ways of doing things are inscribed into and onto bodies. Training, for example, is discussed as a key factor when operating, and inflicting power upon, the (docile) body. The body in training can thus be described as something that can be manipulated and formed, out of a formless clay; a body that is willing to be shaped; a body made to respond to signals, ready at all times and engineered to automatism by habit (Foucault, 1995: 135). But the body can only be disciplined to a certain extent, which is illustrated in the following excerpt:

Tomas (52):

It’s quite interesting, because you can torment yourself pretty hard. But you come to a point where you’re completely exhausted. At first you can go on, bit by bit, but then it stops. So at this time I was almost at the finishing stretch – there were railings on both sides and a whole lot of people cheering. But I was somehow out of whatever I needed – you know, the glycogen and other stuff. It was as if even my liver was out of glycogen. Your brain doesn’t work either. When you hit that wall, you really are out of options. But then you get a little energy anyway – your pulse goes down just a little, and you can manage to torment yourself a little further, although the next step is to literally collapse.

Interviewer:

But what happened to your body?

Tomas:

Nah, it was gone, it was fucking gone.

Tomas tried very hard to complete his race. His body was highly disciplined, but at a certain point it was pushed beyond its limits. The limits of the body were transgressed, as was the experiential limit between normal and abnormal bodily functions. In the next section we continue this discussion, focusing on situations in which the athletes challenge their bodily boundaries and their deeply rooted reactions towards the abject and the dissolving body.

The Gross (Corpo)Reality of an Ironman

In order to bring the body all the way to the goal of completing a competition, the athletes are forced to challenge some of their perceptions of bodily fluids and their shame threshold. The athletes are on a tight schedule, and do not always have time to take a break or go to the washroom. Magnus (age 46), who has competed internationally for a few years, suggests that sometimes it is only a matter of time ‘before your stomach breaks. Then you’re holding the World Cup in misery. You’re pretty much running with your pants down around your knees, but all you can do is keep going.’ Upholding the boundary between the inside and outside of the body is not always possible or even desirable. Another interviewee discusses ‘bathroom breaks’ during competition in the following way.

Daniel (30):

When cycling I usually wear a two-piece outfit, which makes it possible to stand on one side of the cycle, going downhill, and pee. Of course, you need to watch out for the others then. Because, you never stop to piss during the bike race – you’d simply lose too much time. It has to be done quickly.

Interviewer:

It sounds a bit challenging. I mean doing something you are not used to do, physically.

Daniel:

Yes, you really have to turn against your own body. I think I did it for the first time in my first year of competition. You really cross boundaries and do some stuff you’re not built for, actually. It feels wrong, in the body. But if you practice, it gets gradually easier. It’s all about the cycling. Sometimes the bottom part of your body gets numb, too, and you have to stand up for a while on your bike, in order to get some blood into your pelvis, before you can empty yourself.

Although Daniel tries to rationalize the need to cross bodily and shame boundaries, he is also aware that he has to ‘turn against his body’. This means that he has to challenge taboos and shame thresholds – allow his body to leak and to break social taboos − in order to reach his goal. The abject body can be seen as a passage on the way. Thus, accepting this momentarily abject state of being makes it easier to reach the goal. In the observational note below, the question of human extremities is approached and further discussed.

Observational Note, March 2016

There are four Ironman competitors present and they have just finished a training run of some 25 kilometres. Before the session the group had decided that no bathroom breaks were allowed and explicitly practised how to ‘do their business on the move’. After the session the topic came up again. Peter tells the others that he once saw a guy ‘who had shit his pants. I thought, “Oh fuck!” I mean, if you saw anyone downtown walking around with shit in their pants, it would be terrible, of course. But during the competition you’re totally focused on yourself.’ The group continues to discuss the issue, they conclude that it might be weird, but can also feel good at the time. They laugh, while also pointing out that they’re disgusted by the whole thing. Another participant, Jonas, explains that he once gave his mother-in-law a hug when he had just finished a race, and realized at that very moment he had ‘pissed all over myself.’

When facing the ugliness, the shame and the fear of transgressing certain cultural and societal boundaries, displacement mechanisms are activated. There are, of course, different ways of handling the shame of breaking ordinary social rules on bodily leakages. Rationalizing and even practising some of the abject behaviours seems to be a way of managing the transitional abject phase.

Jane (34):

You know, there’s like vomiting and stuff, too. When you’re in the water there’s this taste of oil and gasoline, from the boats, I guess. You swallow loads of water, and you need to get rid of that before you get onto the bike. It’s happened to me many times that I simply need to lose that water. So then you put a couple of fingers down your throat, just to get it out, and you do this in front of the audience. I do that, and loads of other athletes, too.

Interviewer:

But don’t you also lose important nutrients doing that?

Jane:

Actually it feels like it’s only water coming up. Also having been in the water for some time, I’ve pretty much spent my energy, so when I jump onto my bike I go for some gel instead. I’m thinking it’s better to replenish yourself than be stuck carrying around loads of crappy water. Because if there’re waves and stuff you might swallow up to one litre, and that’s no good when you can’t eat or drink when you’re on your bike. So, nah, it’s better to get it out.

Although this bodily phase experienced during competition can be seen as deeply troublesome, particularly in terms of the transgression of boundaries of decency and hygienic standards, it is simultaneously idealized and somewhat ritualized in a majority of the interviews. Throwing up becomes a part of the sport, something needed in order to get the body in tune with the task. Furthermore, the transgression is never total and the participants know it is a temporary state. This means the participants are also counting on certain forms of leakages and threats to their bodily boundaries. In one sense they know this is the only way to achieve their goal of transcending the body and completing the competition. What we have here, then, are narratives of somewhat messy corporeal bodies. Contextually, these bodies and their fluidity are positioned in subversive border zones. It is a somewhat privileged embodiment that is described, one that does not flee from bodily fluids and mess; instead, abjection undermines the very binaries that constitute the messiness, such as the liminality between solid/fluid, public/private, disgusting/desirable, and mind/body. In the Ironman competition, bodily leakage becomes, in some ways, the actual corporeal norm that is being disavowed and effaced (Longhurst, 2001).

Transcending Bodies

Whereas expressions of the abject body can be viewed as a longing for a natural state of mind found somewhere in the outskirts of culture and society, transcendence focuses on becoming something divine and pure. In this section we will analyse the Ironman competition as a sacred ritual, in which the individual passes through a liminal state, aiming to reach a divine position. This is touched upon in the narrative below, in which daydreaming and meditation become part of the endurance experience.

When gearing up for the spring session, I can really long for these prolonged sessions on my bike, just lying there on the road, in a meditative state. It’s your own world, and you have this little farm, this little house – being there and on your bike; being impressed by your own body, just pedalling, pedalling. But that form of existence occurs mainly when you’re on your bike – there, it is meditative. (Liz, 44)

Being on her bike and simultaneously mentally entering the houses, farms and other places she passes during training, Liz enters into a meditative state of mind. It is a process in which the body on the bike is temporarily transcended, and the mind exists simultaneously in two places. Entering into a state of ecstasy that fuses her mind with her surroundings, Liz is living both internally and externally. Her body and subjectivity become less an object and more a zone. Borrowing from Rose (1993), and in reference to a mapping of actual material bodies in space, the concept of corporogeographical comes to mind. Utilizing this concept to map the discursive terrain of critical geography, we can thus ‘interrogate’ material bodies in specific places. In the case of Liz, her material body somewhat dissolves in space, and as such moves through and beyond hegemonic discourses of geography and bodies in space. There is a fluidity in her movement that transgresses geographical limitations. Fredrik has a similar experience:

I usually have a picture of my children taped to the frame of the bike. So, when everything feels difficult and painful I usually look down on that picture and then it becomes easier. Then there are these events – you think about them. Like last time it was a lot about fishing. We were out with the boat, doing some fishing. The children caught their first perches. You think about this, get into that memory and absorb energy from it. You find a way to boost your energy. (Fredrik, 46)

In the borderland of their own comforting memories of families and friends, the athletes find a way to transcend their bodies, freeing themselves in a way from space and time. This is discussed by a majority of athletes, described variously as entering into the ‘second breath of the mind’, or ‘being aware of your actions but not attentive to your attentiveness’ (cf. the ‘runner’s high’ or the ‘flow experience’). We are referring here to a pre-reflexive state found in the borderlands of physical existence. What we are approaching is thus an experience of complete immersion in a particular practice, reaching what religious mystics have referred to as ecstasy. It is a sense of fusion and intensity, of being one with the world. The body is transcended and turned into pure energy. Following Akrich and Pasveer (2004), the athletes approach a perspective in which they are both in and out of the body, are both actors and spectators. This kind of state is touched upon in the excerpt above when Fredrik talks about absorbing energy through different memories. Not bound by time and space, he is simultaneously within and without, thus in a way rejecting the Cartesian duality of mind/self when approaching the Ironman experience.

Once I ran 65 kilometres consecutively, and you know in the last 15 I didn’t even know I was doing it. Somehow it happened automatically, so my brain was not consciously aware of it, thinking ‘we’ll run in this direction, or jump over that branch on the path or whatever’. It happens when you do the triathlon as well – you lose control over what’s happening and things just happen. Yeah, it’s an embodied feeling. It is so profoundly physical and at times I have even felt that it’s somehow not even me who’s out running. Or, sometimes I get this out-of-body experience. It’s not me lifting that arm or jumping over that branch, because I haven’t told myself to do it. I haven’t thought of it. It’s just done, somehow. (Dave, 30)

What is being described here is a state of fusion. Departing from the experience of his body taking the initiative, Dave’s sense of self and body dissolve into the bodily movement. He simultaneously finds and loses himself in the intersection of the body, the self and the surrounding world. What we see here is thus a form of ‘dys-appearance’ of the body through a dual regime of absence−presence (Leder, 1990). In other words, in a situation of discomfort, pain and exhaustion the body hides its internal functioning by opening up to the outside and vice versa. Time implodes and space loses its importance. But although this is a somewhat valued and idealized state, the participants also know that it could come with a high price. Sometimes it is not possible to reverse a bodily transcendence. In the narrative below Erik explain a situation in which he found himself during competition.

We were a smaller group of five or six, and suddenly one of guys next to me turned over, started doing backstroke, and then he raised one arm and started twitching. And they had these rescue swimmers on scooters who dived into the water, grabbed him, brought him up on the scooter to the shore, where an ambulance was waiting. So he reached a hospital in two minutes. If he had had that stroke at home he wouldn’t be alive today, or would have been a vegetable at least. I’m worried about cardiac arrest. A friend of mine went down to the indoor pool, just to practise, and he just hung over the pool edge, totally decrepit. He had a ruptured aorta. But they revived him too, although he had to stop training. (Erik, 52)

Reaching the state of bliss and divinity demands that the athletes take risks. At the same time the attractiveness of entering into the fluidity of bodily movement – experiencing how the embodied self transcends ordinary mundane boundaries and limits – apparently pushes the athletes towards a point where they either break or enter into a new and blissful state of being. Although the athletes are well-trained and up to their task, they also take considerable risks, which sometimes also leads to injuries and even cardiac problems. In the words of Le Breton (2000: 7), testing the limits of the body can in some ways be seen as an:

elegant way of putting one’s life on a par with Death for an instant in order to steal some of its power. In exchange for exposing oneself to the loss of life, the player intends to hunt on Death’s territory and bring back a trophy that will not be an object, but a moment; a moment impregnated with the intensity of self…a moment in extracting from Death or physical exhaustion, the guarantee of a life lived fully.

In other words, it is in the stench of vomit, excrement and even death that one can really feel the aromas of life (Overing, 2006).

Conclusions

Situated in the intersection of the body, the mind, and a social system in which boundary-transgressing expressions are considered acceptable and even somewhat desirable, this study has focused on transformational and transgressive bodily experiences among Ironman Triathlon competitors. In the spirit of a carnalizing sociology (Crossley, 1995) we have focused not only on what athletes do with their bodies, but also how the work of the body and embodied practices bears a transcendent potential that is formative for the sense of self. Possibly, these forms of extreme sports and extreme desires may be interpreted as attempts to escape from a routinized everyday life.

In the process of disciplining the body the athletes reconceptualize the sensation of pain and nausea, and even disgust, turning these emotionally expressive aspects of the corpus into a part of the experience and bending them towards the pleasure of reaching divinity. These sacred experiences, detached from explicitly religious references, are abundantly present in the extreme physical experiences described in the narratives analysed. Referencing Bataille (1993), we can speculate on the social and psychological form of the whole experience of being an Ironman. The disciplined training – pressing the body towards its boundaries and ultimate limits, vomiting, defecating and exploring pain and bodily fragmentation, slowly approaching the moment when it is possible to test the body and compete in a highly physically and psychologically demanding sport – makes it all worthwhile, according to our informants. By overcoming all this resistance, desire becomes even more meaningful; it assures us of its authenticity, providing the force that comes from the certainty of its dominion and divine status. The stubborn defiance of impossibility, also described closely by Bataille, is closely connected to the feeling of emptiness and death. Thus, there is both a physical and a psychological danger involved in reaching towards the sky and its limits. Somehow there is a certain poetic justice in entering a symbolic game with death, in order to transcend the body, reach divinity and feel immersed in the cosmos (Le Breton, 2000).

We would like to place this study in a long tradition of philosophical and sociological explorations of the transgressing and transcending body. In this tradition the body is interpreted and understood as a site for change and utopian possibilities. The exploration thus conducted tells us something about contemporary individuals’ exploration of the existential and corporeal dimensions of modernity. Reading Ironman as a lifestyle enterprise and a marker of an ongoing social character formation, we can speculate on how a range of similar phenomena – such as extreme bodybuilding or Mixed Martial Arts – show how contemporary individuals defy the boundaries of the possible, striving towards a new corporeality defined by transcendence and unlimited possibilities.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Jesper Andreasson

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