Ultrarunning, encounter and paying attention
Ultrarunning, encounter and paying attention
Dr Gavin Mart recently completed his DTh exploring ultrarunning as a site of spiritual encounter. He is now working with the Methodist Church and the Church in Wales, helping to practically develop these ideas across outdoor, community enterprise and pioneering contexts.
Dr Cathy Ross, lecturer and tutor with CMS Pioneer Mission Training talks to Gavin about his doctoral research experience.
Cathy: First of all, congratulations. How does it feel to have completed the DTh?
Gavin: It still feels slightly unreal. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve done, so thanks for being a great supervisor! But it’s also one of the most stretching in terms of how I think and see the world.
The doctorate didn’t just give me answers. It changed the questions I’m asking.
What led you to study this area?
I’d completed both the FdA (Foundation degree in Arts) and MA in Pioneer Mission through CMS and was keen to attempt to answer some of my own research questions. The starting point was very simple. I was already involved in outdoor community and endurance sport, and I kept noticing that people were having profound experiences, myself included. Awe, connection, even moments of what they described as something “bigger than themselves”.
But there was almost no theological language to engage with that.
At the same time, a sports ministry report highlighted a lack of in-depth theological thinking in sport and wellbeing contexts, particularly at ground level. Practice had moved ahead, but theology had not kept up.
That gap became the focus. What is actually happening in these environments, and how might theology respond to it?
So what did you discover?
The core discovery is this:
Ultrarunning can function as a site of spiritual encounter.
Not in a forced or imposed way, but through embodied experience. Through endurance, suffering, landscape and community.
People consistently described moments of awe, surrender and connection, even if they didn’t use religious language. Statements like, “I’m not religious, but I pray when I run,” came up repeatedly.
So, the thesis doesn’t claim that every experience is spiritual. It asks how we might interpret these experiences theologically, and what it means to take them seriously.
That sounds quite different from traditional approaches to mission.
Yes, it shifts the starting point.
Instead of asking, “How do we bring people into church?” it asks, “Where is meaning already happening?”
I draw on John V Taylor here, a former Anglican bishop and missiologist whose work focused on recognising the activity of the Spirit beyond the boundaries of the institutional church. In 1959 he became Africa Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and in 1963 he succeeded Max Warren as its General Secretary, remaining in post until 1974. His thinking was significant because it gave theological permission to take seriously what is happening in the wider world, not just within church structures.
He describes the Spirit in very physical terms, in the strain of muscles, in the contact between people, in what happens between us.
That opens up a different posture. Not imposing meaning, but noticing where something is already unfolding.
Can you give an example from your research?
One runner described what he called “the crack” around 60 miles into a 100-mile race. A point where something in him gave way.
After that, he spoke about feeling like he was between two worlds, even sensing the presence of dead relatives. He didn’t frame it as belief. He described it as experience.
Others spoke about moving through the night and emerging changed, not necessarily stronger, but clearer.
Rather than deciding whether that is “spiritual” or not, I explore how traditions like the mystics might interpret it. There are clear resonances with ideas like the dark night of the soul and transformation through endurance.
The key is not to reduce the experience, but to take it seriously.
What implications does this have for pioneer ministry?
It suggests a different way of engaging.
I describe something I call the “adventurous pause”. A moment of attentiveness before we rush to explain or act.
In that pause, we begin to notice what is already happening. How people are searching for meaning, how community forms through care and hospitality, how environments shape encounter.
Pioneer ministry, in that sense, becomes less about creating something new, and more about recognising what is already there and joining in with it.
You also explore community and digital culture. What did you find there?
There’s an interesting tension.
In ultrarunning, you see very raw forms of community. People helping each other at their weakest, often without any shared belief system. There is a kind of radical hospitality that emerges naturally.
But then that experience is translated online.
One participant said, “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen.”
There’s a kind of modern confession and affirmation loop. We offer the experience up and wait to be recognised.
You might describe this as being alone together. Connected, but not fully known.
So, you get this split between embodied, real experience and its digital reflection, I find this area of research fascinating.
What happens next for you?
The work doesn’t feel finished.
If anything, it feels like it’s opening out.
I’m working on a consultancy basis now both with church organisations and those interested in community wellbeing and enterprise development, and beginning to explore how this kind of attentive, embodied approach can take shape in practice.
What’s becoming clear is that many organisations sense something is shifting culturally, but don’t yet have a framework for engaging it. They can see that people are searching for meaning, but they are not sure how to respond.
That’s where this work is starting to land.
And if people want to explore this further?
I’m already in conversations with churches and organisations who are asking similar questions, particularly in outdoor, wellbeing and community contexts, but also organisations who want to change their approach and posture in the community.
Sometimes organisations want to reimagine their building as an events or creative enterprise space, sometimes they want to get out of the building altogether and venture more meaningfully into the community.
More and more, leaders are asking not how to attract people in, but how to recognise what is already happening and respond well.
This research is really just a starting point for that kind of work.
Find out more about doctoral research with CMS and the University of Roehampton.
