Still Running: a Qualitative Study of Older Women Runners in Rural Maine

Engaging in physical activity is essential for older adults' physical, emotional, and cognitive health as it helps to maintain physical functioning, reduce the risk and effects of chronic diseases, and improve mood and overall quality of life. However, the number of older women who engage in physical activity declines with age and is less than males in their age cohort. This qualitative dissertation aimed to understand the strategies of 13 older women, aged 66-76 and living in Maine, employed to continue outdoor recreational running and the influences, facilitators, and challenges that impact their running. Data were collected through focus groups, journals, and follow-up interviews, and findings were interpreted in two separate article manuscripts using three frameworks: life course perspective, intersectionality, and leisure constraints negotiation. The first manuscript focuses on the negotiation strategies and facilitators that enable older women’s continued running practice. The findings identified four negotiating strategy categories: (1) committing, (2) anticipating and planning, (3) accepting, and (4) avoiding and adapting as well as three facilitator categories: (1) age and experience, (2) social support, and (3) access to running. A conceptual model was created to illustrate the negotiation process and how facilitators enabled their running. The second manuscript used the theoretical lenses of intersectionality and the life course to examine age, gender, and geographic location over the women's life course. The life course lens was used to identify four categories or themes: (1) history and place - how culture and policies impacted the women runners, (2) linked lives - the roles and family influencers, (3) turning points - the timing of when the women started running, and (4) agency - defying and defining being an older woman runner (Elder & Giele, 2009). The lens of intersectionality uncovered the disadvantages at the intersection of being female and growing up in a rural location during policy changes and the impacts of being an older woman in today's society, where there are lingering unmet needs. Overall, this dissertation's findings suggest that the older women runners have adapted to the lack of opportunities for older women and have shown it is not too late to start running and to keep running. The strategies these women employed to continue running offer important insights for developing age-friendly community infrastructure and for targeted physical activity initiatives that support and encourage older women to be physically active.