Geovisualizing the emotional geographies of marathon runners: A case study of the Long Beach Marathon 2010

With the number of marathon events and marathon participants booming in the last decades, and little geographic contribution to studying the marathon practice, I argue in this thesis that it is imperative to understand the spatial experience of running 26.2 miles. A mixed epistemological framework rooted in emotional geography and qualitative GIS informed a mixed methodology using multiple methods of research: autoethnography, interviews, map exercise and GPS data. Drawing from the emotional geography literature, I argue that running, as an everyday activity, is an emotionally embodied practice. The use of qualitative GIS methodologies allowed the geovisualization of emotional geographies and the observation of embodied emotions clustered on the marathon course. I conclude that emotional marathoning is the emotional engagement of runners with the natural environment, the urban landscape and people, engagement which negotiates the marathoners' travel in space and time and their social constructs while advancing along the marathon course.