Running to Recover or Running for Recovery? Bodies in Context

This chapter continues the exploration of the perceptions and experiences of those housed in a temporary recovery facility who participated in running with Back on My Feet. Participants’ bodily experiences are placed in dialogue with discourses about “the running body” and “the homeless body.” This chapter suggests that participants constructed moralized senses of self in relation to volunteers, organizers, and those who do not run while in recovery. They also compel consideration how bodily constructions and practices reproduce morally underpinned, self-oriented associations with homeless and neoliberal discourses that obfuscate systemic causes of homelessness, pose challenges for well-intentioned voluntary or development organizations, and service the relief of the state from social responsibility.