The power dynamics of ultrarunning

Bethan Taylor-Swaine is the Feminist Sports Sociologist and wants to use ultra trail races as the starting point for conversations about a woman’s place in the world

It’s all right there in her handle of Feminist Sports Sociologist, but Bethan Taylor-Swaine talks about positioning herself as an activist academic. She wants to use the skills and knowledge she’s learnt from a PhD in Sports Psychology to effectively communicate the big issues facing us in ultrarunning, and offer some easy-to-digest solutions.

Ultrarunning then:

• 1650% increase in participation since 1996

• 350% increase in participation since 2010

• Women are regularly half of the top 10 finishers

• 41% now run multiple ultras per year (up from 14%)

• 75% of participants are male

• 95% of participants are white - we’ll broach this bit more fully soon

To be clear: ~75% of ultrarunners are white males. The sport has the same level of diversity of the boardrooms at the American executive level. Whether you think that’s a good or a bad thing will determine how well you accept the information in the rest of this article.

It’s widely accepted that the more diverse a company is, the more profitable it is, so w…