Exotic endurance: Tourism, fitness and theMarathon des Sables

Abstract

This paper critically examines the intersections of global tourism and fitness in the Marathon des Sables, an annual ultramarathon in the Sahara desert in which over a thousand athletes run the equivalent of five marathons in six days. It demonstrates how the globalization of health and fitness resonates with familiar Western productions of exotic cultures for the purposes of tourist consumption. Of particular interest here is how established colonial asymmetries are recast in a neoliberal context as runners test their resilience, endurance and strength against an ‘extreme’ Saharan landscape. While the paper calls attention to these asymmetries, it is more concerned with troubling reductive colonial encounters in order to reveal their instability, heterogeneity and ambivalence. Indeed, the central conceit of the Marathon des Sables – that superior Western fitness regimes and technologies will dominate the race – is inverted by the overwhelming success of Moroccan runners and disaggregated by the biopolitical regulation of elite running bodies. These unexpected intersections of global tourism and fitness demand further attention because they reconfigure our received notions of who (and what) is capable of exerting agency in postcolonial encounters.

Exploring tourism ‘slow' mobilities

“…Walking holidays can be de ned as holidays where the "main motive is to walk for most days and for most of the day between accommodation points, either on a linear or circular route" (Dickinson and Lumsdon, 2010: 122). Walking holidays can also encompass outdoor forms of tourism, such as endurance tourism (Lisle, 2016;Olafsdottir, 2013) as they require tness and link the two consumer realms of sport and tourism on one side, and adventure tourism on the other, mingling play and risk (Kane, 2004;Weber, 2001). Finally, walking tourism may also intersect pilgrimage tourism, particularly when the latter is considered from a secular and post-secular viewpoint (Collins-Kreiner, 2010;Nilsson and Tesfahuney, 2018), given the transcendental meanings attributed not only to reaching a speci c 'sacred', though not necessarily religious, destination but, even more importantly, to the journey and the 'circulation' itself.…”

Geographies of running cultures and practices

“…This study is concerned with internal embodied sensations of both running-as-sport and running-as-tourism, with the latter referring to how 'tourist-runners' sense sights and landscape while running in foreign places, perhaps with a high pulse or tired legs. Tourism is also a theme in Lisle's (2016) critical study of an extreme running event in the Sahara Desert. She explores how postcolonial and neo-liberal discourses frame how western runners perceive this as an exotic and testing landscape to be conquered.…”

Performing a walking holiday: Routing, immersing and co-dwelling

“…The term has now become institutionalised and encompasses a diverse range of activities (Dickinson and Lumsdon, 2010a; Fullagar et al, 2012). Walking holidays can also be included in outdoor forms of tourism, such as endurance tourism (Lisle, 2016; Olafsdottir, 2013) as they require fitness and link the two consumer realms of sport and tourism, and adventure tourism, as they both may mingle risk and play (Kane, 2004; Weber, 2001). Walking tourism also intersects pilgrimage tourism, particularly when the latter is considered from a secular and post-secular viewpoint (Collins-Kreiner, 2010; Nilsson and Tesfahuney, 2018), given the transcendental meanings attributed not only to reaching a specific ‘sacred’, though not necessarily religious, destination but, even more importantly, to the journey and the ‘circulation’ itself.…”