Hi Elisa,
Welcome to the group. Your research sounds fantastic and I'm very jealous of your visit to RMIT, they're doing some great work there on self-tracking, exercise and digital ethnography.
As Katy mentioned, I have done running interviews in a few of my projects and more widely explore mobile methodologies and running. My first set-up, which I've written a little about here, was just to strap a recording device to my arm and running alongside another runner. It worked well in quieter places but in urban centres the noise and inability to stay side by side made that unsuccessful.
My current set up then is two recording devices (locked and stored in a pocket), each with a tie-mics & windjammers (cost about £5 for 3 of them) attached to the clothes somewhere. Clap before set off running to align audio files when merging afterwards. Allows you to run without the need to stay side by side and gives a clearer audio. I'm also video recording using a Go-Pro Session on a head mount. That picks up the sounds pretty well too.
Hope that proves helpful and look forward to hearing more about your work.
Best,
Simon
Cook, S. et al (2016) 'Co-Producing Mobilities: negotiating geographical knowledge in a conference session on the move' Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Online First: DOI:10.1080/03098265.2016.1141397
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03098265.2016.1141397
Hi Elisa
I've done a study interviewing people who were members of beginner running groups while they were running. In fact, I am still transcribing some of the interviews, and I can tell you that gravel, traffic and heavy breathing are your worst enemy when trying to hear anything people say after the fact. And losing participants...And being under a flight path. And grass cutting machines. And participants wearing heavy, rustly rain jackets. In fact, I have new understanding of just why people normally run on treadmills in studies!
If you are using audio recorders, I would wear one and get your participant to wear one too, because that way you might be able to piece any inaudible bits together. I also had a very high failure rate with recorders with all the high impact exercise and sweating people were doing (make sure any recorder has a 'lock' button). Also, the more expensive recorders are not necessarily the best for recording runners, my most reliable ones were £8 and I bought them from Ebay.
Simon Cook has also done a bunch of running interviews, he might have some insights to share too.
Katy
Good day to everyone!
Let me introduce myself. My name is Elisa Herrera Altamirano, passionate about sports and PhD student in the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona and currently working on my thesis about running. I am so happy to have found this group of running cultures, I'm almost feeling like home :)
I am currently starting my second year of the PhD programme in the Information and Knowledge Society and I am about to go to RMIT in Australia as a visiting PhD student to learn about digital ethography methods. I am conducting 'running and walking' interviews as part of the fieldwork stage of my project to explore mobile methodologies in the investigation of running practices. My theoretical focus is on posthuman ideas of the body and its continuity to urban spaces and the impact of self-tracking the running activity in the construction of a cuantified self/embodied experience .
I am eager to learn about research focuses towards running practices and share mines.
Thanks for your sharings! and looking forward to increase our knowledge