Author: Jacob Richter

With the advent of COVID-19 and subsequent running event postponements and cancellations, there has been a rise in virtual recreational running events. Prior to this life-altering epidemic, virtual running events were relegated to the margins and were not given respect in the running community. While some may view the cancellation of “in-person” running events as a loss, I posit that the migration from in-person to virtual running events introduces an opportunity for vernacular rhetorics in the women’s running community to change the dominant narrative in the sport and promote inclusivity. Given that the majority of runners who enter recreational running…

Until 1972, women were not allowed to officially compete in running marathons. Today, 45.7% of American marathon participants are women (Hanson, Latsenko and Luck, 2018). As more women have joined the sport of running, they have participated in quiet activism. Pottinger defines quiet activism as “small, every day, embodied acts, often of making and creating, that can be either implicitly or explicitly political in nature” (Pottinger 1). Running as quiet activism takes place outside of explicitly feminist groups, expanding the conceptualization of feminist activism and place. Women runners contribute to quiet feminist activism through the amalgamation of the physical body…