Anthropologists often claim sports matter because they are metaphors for society. But how do we account for the sensuous excesses of physical cultures—the feelings of movement, pleasure, pain, love and fatigue, as well as the sense of aspiration, experimentation and striving that accompany them?

While conducting research on the world of cycling in India, I was struck by the immense popularity of a particular form of riding called randonneuring. These endurance rides, which cyclists describe as “races against yourself,” have become a central frame of reference. Do these endurance cyclists reflect something changing in India: new notions of the body, of self-care, leisure or work?

However, I argue that beyond a sign of some larger social structure, endurance cycling offers something as an extreme. Endurance cyclists in India show that in the struggle to push beyond the boundaries of one's body, there are moments of loss of control; that seemingly contained and internally-oriented sense self-improvement—is redefined as unruly, undisciplined and having the potential to transform the relationship of the self to others.

Author biography:
Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria is assistant professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. He is author of The Slow Boil: Street Food, Public Space and Rights in Mumbai (Stanford, 2016). He has also co-edited, with Colin McFarlane, the book Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia (Routledge, 2011). For over a decade he has researched the politics of public space in Mumbai. He is currently working on a project examining the cultural life of the bicycle in South Asia.