Geographies of run-commuting in the UK

Abstract

Drawing on the first academic research into run-commuting, this paper places running more firmly on the agenda within transport studies. Run-commuting is a rapidly growing mobile practice in which people run between work and home. Academically, very little is known about the practice, with scant research conducted into it. This paper begins to rectify this by critically exploring the geographies of run-commuting in the UK and the politics of mobility that emerge from this. Based on a survey of 287 UK run-commuters, this paper explores the broader trends and patterns within the locations, demographics and movements of run-commuters in the study. This reveals a highly socially-fractured practice with various privileges that enable and constraints that limit run-commuting possibilities. Run-commuting is racialised, gendered and classed with it being most popular with urban-dwelling middle-aged white men in highly paid professional jobs, social differentiations that punctuate much of the practice. This paper also shows the uniqueness of run-commuting as a mobile practice. Arguably more concerned with running than commuting, run-commuting is highly entwined with and affected by other practices of everyday life, notably the rhythms of work, home and exercise. Run-commuting research expands the scope of active travel and demonstrates the value of conversations between transport, mobility and sport studies in understanding such modes. It is also a practice that challenges many understandings held about transport, such as notions around motivation, speed, time, productivity and effort. Run-commuting is a productively provocative practice that opens up opportunities to think and do transport otherwise. This paper shows its worth to transport studies' agendas.