Running Freeman

Running

LINDSEY A. FREEMAN

“This is not your average handbook on running. It is far more incisive, far more tender, far more uncanny—and reading it will make you rethink what you know about an activity all of us at one time or another have pursued, resisted, witnessed, or even loved. Lindsey A. Freeman shows us that far from a solitary pursuit, running is about connecting to ourselves and each other. From the amateur to the Olympian and from the bodily to the transcendental, there is so much she both celebrates and scrutinizes. And in true handbook fashion, Hazel Meyer’s delightful, ludic illustrations provide the perfect running companion.”—MARK YAKICH, author of Football

In Running, former ncaa Division I track athlete Lindsey A. Freeman presents the feminist and queer handbook of running that she always wanted but could never find. For Freeman, running is full of joy, desire, and indulgence in the pleasure and weirdness of having a body. It allows for a space of freedom—to move and be moved. Through tender storytelling of a lifetime wearing running shoes, Freeman considers injury and recovery, what it means to run as a visibly queer person, and how the release found in running comes from a desire to touch something that cannot be accessed when still. Running invites us to run through life, legging it out the best we can with heart and style.

PRACTICES A series edited by Margret Grebowicz

From Running All runners have a few races like my middle school mile relay final, races that they feel define them as a runner and by extension clarify them as a person, both to themselves and to others. It wasn’t a good idea to run in the second lane, which meant that I was running a slightly longer distance than my opponent, and it wasn’t smart to set out at a full sprint. If I had been faster or run a better race, made ground more slowly, slotted myself behind the front-runner in the first lane and let her take the drag of the wind, and then chosen one moment to pass and kick, we might have won, but I had no mind for strategy then. And even now, although I dream of a controlled elegance, if I’m honest, my default mode takes the shape of ragged will. Thirty years later I can still feel this race, the wild pain of pushing my body to collapse and the warm presence of the other runner on my left, wanting the same thing I wanted: to finish, to win, to move those watching, to make contact with each other, with ourselves and the world, to touch and be touched.

March 160 pages, 20 illustrations, 5”x7” paper, 978-1-4780-1965-7 $15.95tr/£13.99 cloth, 978-1-4780-1701-1 $84.95/£76.00

Lindsey A. Freeman is Associate Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University.