‘This is The End, My Beautiful Friend!’: serious leisure and the end of career

Abstract

The number of runners is increasing, among them, especially, the older ones. But everything that starts comes to an end, including a runner’s career. Confronting limitations often caused by aging, the older runner has to deal with this situation. This paper interprets the end of career of a runner as a learning moment facing a new challenge. Various factors that influence this process were recorded and the different ways of coping with the end of a runner’s career were analyzed in the context of a racing group in Porto Alegre.