“There Was a Bagpiper Playing Amazing Grace, and I Broke Down Sobbing”: The Body and Military Affects at the Canada Army Run

This article explores the affective (re)production of military support at the Canada Army Run. Drawing on qualitative interviews with primarily civilian race participants and focusing on two sites of military memorialization along the racecourse, I suggest that runners’ heightened physical state while engaging with commemorative spaces may open them to emotion. As a theoretical provocation, I suggest that the racecourse’s commemorative spaces produce affects of reverence that “stick” to deceased servicepeople, which runners—being in an emotionally heightened state—are receptive to. As a result, race participation may orient participants toward the military. This work contributes to critical sport literature concerned with how emotion sustains cultures of militarism, highlighting the centrality of the body.