This article examines the ways in which high-performance female ultrarunning bodies are created by and understood through the discourses of the normative running body, the ideal female body and pain. Using a Foucauldian framework, this paper shows how the ultrarunning body becomes a desired body beyond the marathon and how these same desires produce multiple and complex subjectivities for female ultrarunners. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 high performance female ultrarunners. Findings suggest that ultrarunning is a sporting space which gives rise to more diverse subjectivities than previously found in distance running literature. Simultaneously, this discourse produces disciplined bodies through the mode of desire and “unquestioned” social norms, paralleling the constructs of extreme sports and (re)producing middle-classness.

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This paper examines how marathoners develop multiple and diverse subjectivities within this distance running space. Specifically, we engage in a case study and critically explore the various ways that a small but growing running group called the “Marathon Maniacs” positions itself within the marathon community. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986, 1990) interdependent concepts of field, habitus, and capital, we uncover the multiple and complex ways that legitimate marathon bodies are constructed within this group. We untangle how the Maniacs negotiate beliefs prominently held in the larger marathon community, revealing how some beliefs are reappropriated in Maniac culture. Further, we critically analyze the forms of capital that are privileged within the Marathon Maniacs, identifying how these practices serve to distinguish and classify Maniacs as distance runners (Bourdieu, 1986, 1990; Krais, 2006).

Leadership has frequently employed sport stories and metaphor to exemplify attributes and attitudes that leaders should embrace in order to succeed. Competitive sport entered educational contexts in elite British boarding schools for the very purpose of providing training for future political and corporate leaders. As such, the paradigms for leadership reproduced through sport metaphors have held on to traditional, masculine views of leadership. Yet, these paradigms are outdated and do not fit the values embraced by twenty-first century leadership concepts. New sport metaphors are needed. This article begins the task of shaping new perspectives about leadership from the sport world. Specifically, attitudes and practices of high-performance female ultrarunners provide prime examples of the new lessons for leadership, focusing on empathy as one of the

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