Running with the weather: The case of marathon

Mobility is not only mediated by surfaces and topologies but also by the material sensations of ‘weather-worlds’. People move in and through the air, sunshine, heat, rain, wind, snow, fog or icy roads. Yet the weather is largely absent as an analytic focus in mobilities studies. This chapter contributes to studies of active mobility by examining marathon running as an urban outdoor sport that takes place in the always-contingent weather-world. The chapter contributes to the mobilities research literature with the notion of ‘weathering the running body’. By this, we mean a multisensorial and affectual process of engagement with the world. Second, this is a relation of relative openness or ‘osmosis’ rather than a self-contained ‘container body’ standing before the world. Third, the ‘weathering of the running body’ is a matter of distributed agency between the running body and the immediate environment.