What If ChatGPT Were my Training Coach? Negotiating Temporalities, Bodily Autonomy and Setting Boundaries in Endurance Sports
TL;DR
This study documented engagement with ChatGPT as a dialogic tool while preparing and adapting the authors' endurance training, revealing two interconnected themes: how conversational guidance shaped their bodily autonomy and how ChatGPT’s present-oriented responses created temporal misalignments with the slow rhythms of endurance training.
Abstract
Generative AI (GenAI) tools are increasingly used by recreational endurance athletes as informal training coaches. Yet, little is known about how such tools intervene in embodied training practices. To this end, through a four-month trio-autoethnographic study, we, three HCI researchers and experienced runners, documented our engagement with ChatGPT as a dialogic tool while preparing and adapting our endurance training. Our study revealed two interconnected themes: (1) how conversational guidance shaped our bodily autonomy and (2) how ChatGPT’s present-oriented responses created temporal misalignments with the slow rhythms of endurance training. We highlight tensions between fast, confident GenAI guidance and the non-linear rhythms of endurance training. We conclude by discussing design implications for the future of AI coaching systems that foreground bodily awareness and explicit boundary-setting and support reflective and sustainable training practices.
