Final Thoughts

Here are some other thoughts people had after completing the survey:

"Running is a sport that will prevail for a long time because of how natural it is for the human body"

"I think runners are mentally tough and disciplined. These are good attributes for people in anything they do"

"I hate when sports use running as a punishment. Running is the reward!"

"It's a hard sport to get into but once you do its hard to get out; kind of really addicting"

"Running is very hard for me, but very rewarding. Sometimes, when I'm running, I get this huge sense of appreciation and gratitude for the world. Only if I'm running outside, though. I will put my hands above my head and praise something, someone. I don't think this happens to me in any other everyday, normal aspect of my life."

"I truly hope that there is a shift towards people being more active rather than being a 'fast food generation'"

"It's such a HUGE part of my life, I can't imagine not having it." 

"Running is all about being healthy and having fun with friends!"

"I believe running can make you a happier, more positive individual. I have found on a personal level it has helped me remove negative people and negatively in general from my life."

"I had a much younger friend tell me recently I was an inspiration to her and that made me happy."

"I have found that the running community tends to have a bias against people that do not exercise regularly, especially overweight individuals. Kind of a superiority complex."

Going back to the goal of this blog I have tried to incorporate ideas from Stuart Hall, Michael Warner, and Anderson with regards to imagined communities, cultural roots, and perceptions of time to running. The goal is to gain perspectives from a variety of people with different backgrounds in the sport of running. I have incorporating a survey as a part of technological popular culture to reveal various things about running and compiled the information into a blog. In doing so I have learned that there are not two runners that are alike. Runners have different preferences about where they run, who they run with, when they run, how time passes when they run, if they race, goals they have, etc. However, although there are not two runners that are exactly the same there are many similarities and common goals that overlap among runners to create an imagined community.