Running to run: embodiment, structure and agency amongst veteran elite runners

This article is concerned with ageing embodiment and social change. It operates a synthesis of Bourdieu's theory of the logic of practice and understandings of agency as an embodied process. Is age a source of habitus? Within what structural circumstances can ageing embodiment lead to social transformation? What are the limitations to this? An analysis of the minutiae of everyday embodiment of older social actors active in the social field of Veteran athletics supports the contention that over time we become caught up in an age habitus. A challenge to this can be effected through modalities of embodiment within social fields intransition. The permeability of the field, and its own internal logic, the achievement of bodily competence, combined with the active control of the organization of the field, offer some opportunities to reconstruct the discourse of ageing.