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Running
as Ritual: Runner and Professor of Sociology Andrew Roth
Combines Sport and Research while Running 100-Mile
Ultra-marathons
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In a unique combination of hobby and research Andrew Roth, a
visiting professor of sociology at Pomona College and
long-time Claremont resident, draws on his own experience
running ultra-marathons (completing 34, ranging in distance
from 50km [31.1 miles] to 100-miles) to study the 100-mile
distance run as a kind of "rite of passage.
 In early November, Roth finished 10th overall in a 100-mile
ultra-marathon in the Sonoran Desert outside of Phoenix.
That’s right: 100 miles on foot. He did it in 22 hours, 40
minutes, and 10 seconds.
Being open to what it’s like to be in your own body, says
Roth, is for him the link between his passion for running
and his academic research. Citing sociologist Emile Durkheim,
Roth notes that since running is both a sensory experience
and a social one, it can be studied as ritual.
After running the Javelina-100, Roth presented his findings
on the act of running as ritual, in a talk entitled
“100-Mile Ultra-marathons as Ritual: Insights from Durkheim,
Van Gennep and Turner,” to the UCLA class Self & Society
taught by Professor of Sociology Linda Van Leuven.
“Rituals,” says Roth, “act on the body to affect the soul,
and second, that in order to be effective rituals must bring
together groups of people, who in coming together affirm
their individual identity as members of the group and
collectively as constituting a group.
“Van Gennep is famous for analyzing rites of passage in
terms of three stages - separation, transition, and
incorporation. I propose that 100-mile races (and ultras in
general) are a kind of rite of passage and that they can be
analyzed in terms of these three stages.
“Victor Turner, an anthropologist, talks about how initiates
and other ritual participants are "liminal" figures -- they
fall "betwixt and between" the ordinary, normative social
roles of the society or group to which they belong. I draw
on a variety of examples from running to show how, in long
ultras, the runner is a sort of liminal figure.”
“My most important point is fundamentally sociological: At a
race like the Javelina 100, there are individual runners.
However, for each official competitor, there is a web of
social relations that allow her or him to run.”
For Roth, the Javelina-100 is his reward for a lifetime of
hard work. He started running with his father, CMC Professor
John Roth, a 1962 graduate of Pomona, on a daily five-mile
run. “I’d actually run a shorter loop than my dad,” says the
younger Roth, “but I thought of it as training for baseball,
which was my sport back then.” It wasn't until he entered
Claremont High School a few years later, that he discovered
a love for running.
Roth talks about “flow” in running: the idea that
competition is not in beating someone else, but in
understanding that your competitors bring out the best in
you and that you do the same for them.
“That’s one of the things that makes running a very social
event,” Roth says. It’s in this idea that Roth’s passion for
running crosses into his life as a sociology professor. He
has made an art of balancing his love of running with his
love of teaching and research.
“My understanding of running and participating in
ultra-marathons is informed by my background in sociology,”
says Roth, explaining that the common sense view of the
sport is that there’s one person running, and this leads to
all the clichés of the “lone” long distance runner.
“But in a run like the Javelina-100, while there’s one
person running, many people are making that run possible.
It’s very social.” In that desert course, he says, for
example, runners are with other people a lot of the time.
They follow a 15-mile loop in one direction, then turn
around and run it in the other until they’ve covered the 100
miles.
“You’re always passing and cheering people on all day long
and into the night,” says Roth. “People are supporting you
all along--either at the race or in the months leading up to
it.” His wife, Liz, was his crew at the aid stations along
the race course, providing a change of clothes, water, food,
encouragement, or whatever else he needed.
“Running itself and especially doing 100 miles is an intense
sensory experience,” says Roth. “It requires a lot of
cerebral planning and thinking, but at some point it becomes
purely a bodily experience. When you run that long, you cast
off a lot of incidental things and you whittle it down to
the very basic thoughts, aims and experiences so that all
you want to do is get to the next aid station or keep your
fluids up.”
At Pomona College, Professor Roth teaches Introduction to
Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Sociology of Documentary
Film, Qualitative Research Methods, and Sociology of Mass
Media. He is currently working a paper connecting his
experience on the relationship between running and racing,
and teaching sociology. When complete it will be a chapter
in a book that he and Linda Van Leuven are co-editing on the
topic of the body in academia. "The contributors to the book
will all write about how their experience of their own body
affects their classroom teaching."
Roth, who earned his Ph.D. from UCLA, spends his free time
sharing his expertise and passion for running with students
at CHS, where he periodically serves as Assistant Coach for
the cross country teams. |
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