Coding Materials for Longitudinal Narrative Analysis of the Pain Cave: Codebook, Triangulation Matrix, and Analytical Tables

Scope and rationale. This dataset deposits the analytical infrastructure produced by a longitudinal narrative analysis of how the “pain cave” — a vernacular metaphor for the somatic-affective space of extreme endurance suffering — is co-constructed across nine years (2017–2026) of podcast interviews with elite ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter. Pain is a constitutive yet under-theorized object in the social study of women’s ultra-endurance running. Quantitative work has established that pain is near-universal in long-distance running (O’Connor 2021), worsens linearly across multistage ultramarathons while maladaptive coping strategies predict did-not-finish outcomes (Alschuler et al. 2020), and remains comparable in intensity between women and men during actual endurance events despite divergent laboratory pain profiles (O’Connor 2021; Knechtle et al. 2022). Qualitative scholarship has begun to map how women ultra-runners narratively construct, articulate, and reframe pain: a Foucauldian discursive analysis identified the discomfort / good pain / bad pain typology that female ultra-runners themselves elaborate (Hanold 2010); a recent feminist narrative constructionist study of seven women in a six-day ultramarathon documented their movement from pain-as-problem to “chosen pain” to collective suffering through the quest meta-narrative, the performance narrative, and the forward momentum narrative (Bennett et al. 2026); and a moral-language analysis of ultrarunning talk has shown how pain and suffering operate as ethical-evaluative resources (Gross 2025). The coding materials deposited here contribute to that emerging conversation by reconstructing, episode by episode, the dialogic emergence of pain as a meaningful object in the public, mediated talk of one paradigmatic athlete across a full competitive career — a temporal scale absent from race-bounded qualitative designs. Contents. The deposit aggregates seven analytical artefacts in a single XLSX workbook (nine sheets) with companion README, LICENSE, and CITATION.cff: (i) corpus catalogue cross-walk to Deposit A (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20182221); (ii) grounded-theory codebook (Charmaz 2014) with five axial codes; (iii) cross-source triangulation matrix; (iv) timeline of four narrative phases; (v) matrix of eight pivotal dialogic moments; (vi) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes et al. 1999; Gardner & Moore 2007) mapping table linking athlete narrative moves to ACT processes; (vii) Epistemic Transparency Audit (ETA) appendix documenting every analytical decision. Theoretical framework. Analysis mobilises Frank’s narrative typology — quest, chaos, restitution (Frank 1995) — and dialogic narrative analysis (Frank 2010, 2012), extended beyond illness to the domain of voluntary endurance suffering, with sociological grounding in Smith and Sparkes’ programme of narrative inquiry in sport (Smith & Sparkes 2009; Sparkes & Smith 2014). The dataset thus contributes both to the sociology of women’s ultra-endurance and to the methodological repertoire of dialogic narrative analysis applied to public, mediated talk rather than research interviews. Embargo rationale. Files are restricted until 1 December 2027 to align release with the peer-review and publication timeline of the companion manuscript targeted for submission to Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health (Taylor & Francis) in October 2026. The associated corpus catalogue (Deposit A, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20182221) is under the same embargo for the same reason. Metadata remain openly discoverable from publication of this record; full files are released automatically on 1 December 2027. Anticipated reuse. Narrative inquiry in sport; sociology of pain and gendered endurance (extending the discursive analysis of Hanold 2010, the race-bounded narrative ethnography of Bennett et al. 2026, and the moral-language framework of Gross 2025 to a career-scale dialogic-longitudinal design); ACT-informed sport psychology (Hayes et al. 1999; Gardner & Moore 2007); qualitative methods pedagogy (the codebook and Epistemic Transparency Audit serve as teaching artefacts demonstrating reflexive grounded theory in mediated talk corpora). Alignment. This deposit is built in conformity with FAIR principles (Wilkinson et al. 2016). Licensing under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 mandates citation, prohibits commercial enclosure, and enforces copyleft on derivative analytical works.