Running on Heritage, a Conceptual Discussion on the Roles of Heritage Trails and of Augmented Reality on Amateur Runner Athletes

This conceptual discussion focuses on the amateur athletes (runners) when participating in distance races (long runs) that are set in places of heritage significance. Its purpose is to identify whether there might be common areas of sport, heritage, connectedness and psychological distance, as these blend with the experience of the amateur athlete during long runs. Connections between elements such as memory, identity, legacy and sport are being examined from the amateur athlete’s point of view. An attempt is made to draw a parallel between the visitor and the athlete. Moreover, this paper examines whether the amateur athlete’s experience is further enhanced through augmented reality. The introduction of augmented reality, a software term for location-based information delivered online, is expected to enhance human involvement and deliver a richer experience, as it is able to deliver related data to visitors in electronic form, during their visit. This paper examines whether the information provided by augmented reality creates a link to the heritage related ambience of the location, i.e. the heritage trail, in which case it may have an encouraging role to the amateur athlete’s endeavor to finish the long run. Implementations, further considerations for research and limitations are also discussed.