From a Fall in the Mall to a Run in the Sun: One Journey to Ironman Triathlon

This autoethnographic account describes my personal leisure journey through an Ironman triathlon. The purpose of this paper is to highlight three themes that shed light on events like the Ironman as a leisure experience. The first theme reveals personal predispositions and the roles they play in deciding what constitutes leisure. The second theme discusses social or support networks within and around the Ironman experience. Third, the roles of key encounters are discussed as a way to make sense of what I was doing and how I was feeling. My Ironman experience represents an effort to escape the ordinary within defined, but extreme, limits. It is part of a larger search for complexity and, most of all, balance.

[1]  J. Huizinga.  Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture , 1938 .

[2]  Experience, Narrative, and the Relationship Between Them , 1998 .

[3]  K. Charmaz,et al.  Stories of Suffering: Subjective Tales and Research Narratives , 1999 .

[4]  D. Unruh,et al.  Characteristics And Types Of Participation In Social Worlds , 1979 .

[5]  Roger L. Moore,et al.  Recreational Specialization: A Critical Look at the Construct , 2001 .

[6]  N. Denzin.  Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century , 1996 .

[7]  William G. Spady,et al.  Dropouts from higher education: An interdisciplinary review and synthesis , 1970 .

[8]  J. Buckworth,et al.  Characteristics of exercise behavior among college students: application of social cognitive theory to predicting stage of change. , 2000, Preventive medicine.

[9]  R. Stebbins.  Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure , 1992 .

[10]  William R. Catton join,et al.  Mountain Experience: The Psychology and Sociology of Adventure , 1985 .

[11]  R. Viken,et al.  Distance from Peers in the Group's Perceived Organizational Structure: , 2003 .

[12]  P. Singelmann.  Exchange as Symbolic Interaction: Convergences between Two Theoretical Perspectives , 1972 .

[13]  J. Kelly,et al.  Leisure Identities and Interactions , 1984 .

[14]  A. Cohen.  Self-conscious anthropology , 1992 .

[15]  W. Kuentzel.  How Specialized is Specialization Research? , 2001 .

[16]  A. Bolin,et al.  Just "tri" and "du" it: the variable impact of female involvement in the triathlon/duathlon sport culture. , 2003 .

[17]  R. Stebbins.  Social World, Life-style, and Serious Leisure: Toward a Mesostructural Analysis , 1993 .

[18]  B. Hortz,et al.  Predicting vigorous physical activity using social cognitive theory. , 2003, American journal of health behavior.

[19]  T Kearns,et al.  The Psychology of Play , 1914 .

[20]  B. McFarlane.  Comments On Recreational Specialization: A Critical Look At The Construct , 2001 .

[21]  Michael A. Tarrant,et al.  Environmental justice and the spatial distribution of outdoor recreation sites: an application of geographic information systems. , 1999 .

[22]  M. Ellis,et al.  Why People Play , 1973 .

[23]  Arthur P. Bochner,et al.  Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject , 2000 .

[24]  Hobson Bryan,et al.  Recreation Specialization Revisited , 2000 .

[25]  G. Godbey,et al.  An analysis of adult play groups: Social versus serious participation in contract bridge , 1992 .

[26]  Edward McAuley,et al.  Cognitive mediators of the social influence-exercise adherence relationship: A test of the theory of planned behavior , 1995, Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

[27]  H. Bryan.  Leisure Value Systems and Recreational Specialization: The Case of Trout Fishermen , 1977 .

[28]  D. Scott,et al.  A Rejoinder to Reviewers' Comments , 2001 .

[29]  Thomas A. Schwandt.  Dictionary of qualitative inquiry , 2001 .

[30]  Arthur P. Bochner.  Criteria Against Ourselves , 2000 .

[31]  Mountain Experience: The Psychology and Sociology of Adventure , 1983 .

[32]  H. Bryan.  Comments on the paper by David Scott and C. Scott Shafer. , 2001 .