Exploring the relationship between movement, nature, and purpose.
Research
The Data Double
The Data Double follows one question through four posts: who speaks for the athlete's body once it has a digital twin? We start with the device that records, move to the runners who take it off, then ask what happens when a system begins to interpret the body, and finally when it begins to advise it. Each post is anchored in a recent study and written from the position of a runner and coach. This is exploratory work, shared as it develops.
1 · The device records
When Garmin Starts Telling the Story
What happens when a watch turns the moving body into numbers? Aggerholm et al. call it the digi-appearing body.
It works through reduction, externalisation and optimisation. The data can sharpen our awareness,
but it can also replace what we feel.
Anchor: Aggerholm, Ronkainen & Schmidli (2025)
2 · The device is removed
"If It Isn't on Strava, Did It Happen?"
Two runners put their smartwatches away and found freedom. They also found uncertainty about their own abilities. The pilot study shows how far the wearable has become part of a runner's identity, and what a "naked wrist" reveals.
Anchor: Lev & Landgren (2026)
3 · The system interprets
Can AI Read an Athlete's Body?
AI can spot patterns that athletes and coaches miss.
But which body does it know, and whose body did it learn from?
A recent review supports AI as decision support with a human in the loop. It also shows how much of the evidence rests on elite and team-sport athletes.
Anchor: Alkasasbeh et al. (2026)
4 · The system advises
Algorithm versus Body
The same advice can land very differently depending on whether we think it came from a coach or an AI. Vodrahalli et al. show that beliefs about the source shape whether people take advice at all. Their study did not involve athletes. This post asks what happens when the device starts to explain how your body feels.
Anchor: Vodrahalli et al. (2022)
Who Are We When We Run?
Across the world, different anecdotes are utilized to motivate: while some sayings stress the importance of self, others stress the importance of interdependence. However, much research is based on the so-called Western view of the independent and autonomous individual whose internal traits drive his or her motivation. This approach might be too simplistic and may overlook important motivational dynamics in other cultural contexts. So, I ask the question: Who Are We When We Run?
Drawing on phenomenological theory, particularly the embodied perception and concept of elemental haptics to examine how trail runners experience and narrate their sensory engagement with nature.
Sporting Embodiment among Trail Runners
How the Body Shows Up
01
The Disciplined Body: What Injury Taught Me About Trust
Opening the phenomenology-of-running series — on trust, discipline, and what a body learns to endure.
Hall, Rhodes and Papathomas studied ten injured ultrarunners and found something counterintuitive: many trust their own accumulated bodily knowledge over medical advice — what the researchers call "The Disciplined Body." A look at pain as something ultra-runners don't just tolerate, but come to value as part of the sport itself.
02
What Comes of Identity Over Time, If an Injury Doesn't resolve?
Part two — from the injured body to the identity built on top of it.
Brewer and Petitpas call it athletic identity foreclosure: when a sport becomes the whole architecture of who you are, with no other identity ever explored alongside it. Furie et al.'s systematic review adds the harder data — involuntary retirement from injury carries some of the most severe psychological consequences an athlete can face. What happens to the self when running stops being optional?
03
When Garmin Starts Telling the Story
Part three — dys-appearance's digital cousin.
A recent paper by Aggerholm et al. extends Leder's theory of embodiment into the world of running watches, arguing that self-tracking devices don't just record the body — they change how it shows up in awareness at all, through reduction, externalisation, and optimisation. What happens when the numbers on your wrist start to feel more trustworthy than the sensation in your legs?
04
Eu-Appearance: What the body feels like when nothing is wrong
Closing the series — from disciplined body to dys-appearance to this.
Drew Leder gave us the vocabulary for a body that shows up because something's wrong. Kristin Zeiler asked the question nobody had bothered with: what does the body feel like when something's right? Her answer — eu-appearance — turns out to be the quiet argument this whole series has been building toward.