Hurting together: The gendered embodiment of pain in women ultrarunners.

Over the past decade, ultramarathon running has grown in popularity, particularly among women. Pain is central to the sport due to its extreme physiological, biomechanical, and psychological demands. Existing research has attended to the 'culture of risk' sport narrative, illustrating how ultra-athletes often push through and glorify pain to optimise performance. However, little is known about women ultrarunners, and how gender shapes how they negotiate this narrative, and in turn, experience pain. Adopting an embodied, feminist narrative constructionist approach, we explored how seven women ultrarunners storied their experiences of pain before, during, and after a six-day ultramarathon. Data were generated through ethnographic observations over 12 days and semi-structured interviews at three time points, and analysed using thematic and structural narrative analyses. Women drew on the quest meta-narrative and embodied yet also resisted dominant sport performance and forward momentum narrative types to structure their stories of pain. At the beginning of the race, athletes framed pain as a problem to be solved requiring constant monitoring and tangible support. By the race mid-point, physical and mental fatigue intensified, isolation and loneliness became central, and athletes could no longer solve pain through task-oriented strategies. They negotiated this challenge by reclaiming agency through stories of chosen pain, which catalysed a shift to a focus on collective suffering, drawing on their relationships with other competitors to push through pain. A combination of individual problem-solving and chosen pain alongside relational pain management may contribute to more sustainable models of resilience and success in multi-day ultras.