How Training Partners Can Make You Run Better – Runner’s World

I didn’t grow up a runner. Running a mile in gym class was bad enough; when I saw high school cross-country kids head outside to run four, or five, or six (six!!!) miles, I would shudder and hurry to the pool. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would end up a marathoner.

I started running after college, when I moved to New York City, broke and alone, and was invited outside by a group of lunchtime runners at my first job. This was in late 2008, when I was 22. Fast forward a decade, to the spring of 2019. By this time, I had run nine marathons and whittled my time down to 2:50 . . . twice. I felt sure I had more in me—a lot more. Call it delusion or aspiration or hubris, but I really believed I could run a sub-2:45 Olympic Trials qualifying (OTQ) standard. I just couldn’t tap into the performance I needed.

In 10 years of running, I’d learned a lot of lessons, but one of the most important was that I run better with others. Not necessarily faster—although yes, sometimes faster—but “better” in that I try harder and give up less often. The issue was that I could only manage to recruit workout partners sporadically. What I needed was a training group.

I won’t get into the details of how I assembled such a group, but here are the basics: there were four of us, all women; we came from three different local running teams; and we were all shooting for the same OTQ goal. We committed to the same running coach (), the same training plan (which he wrote), and the same marathon (Philadelphia), and we pledged to meet one another for as many of the workouts as we could leading up to the race.

I must emphasize here that it was the workouts we committed to doing together. We all have vastly different jobs that put us on different schedules, and we live in different places (in my case, a different state), so it would have been impossible to meet for runs every single day. Wednesdays and Saturdays, though? Most of those we could manage.

The beginning of group training was rough for me—I got dropped from the pack a lot in those first several weeks. Over time, however, my workouts began to improve. Here are some of the reasons why.

Partners Build Accountability

Using a group for accountability isn’t a new concept; plus, anyone who is anywhere near an OTQ time probably doesn’t need to be held accountable to run—myself included. However, pretty much everyone needs help when it comes to all the non-running stuff. Stretching, drills, foam rolling, prehab . . . all those little, annoying, but oh-so-necessary activities are easy to skip when you hit the snooze button one too many times and “run out of time.” But because I was meeting my training group at a specific place at a specific time, I reliably got out of bed on time and consequently had the time to do all the little things I may have otherwise neglected.

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Everyone Has Strengths and Weaknesses

Running with a consistent group also helps you recognize what kind of runner you are. Me, I’m horrible at running hills. The moment there’s any sort of incline, I’m one step, two steps, 20 feet back. I’m also not exactly a powerhouse when it comes to speedwork. But give me some long tempo repeats or a progression run, and I can usually hang.

Recognizing these patterns, and also my training partners’ strengths and weaknesses, helped build my confidence, because none of us were “better” or “worse” runners; we just ran differently—and when you know your differences, you can work with them. For instance, when we would run a hilly route, my challenge was to keep from panicking when I started to fall behind on an uphill. How did I do this? By recognizing that time after time, when it came to downhills, I could really let loose and close the gap. If all four of us got from the start of the workout to the finish together, it didn’t matter how we did it; it just mattered that we got there.

You Are Not Your Bad Days

Another mental lesson I learned by running with the group was that the brain lies. All of us have good days and bad, and it sucks to be the one having the bad day—it’s demoralizing to be missing the workout paces and wanting to quit.

But when you train with the same crew over and over, you begin to recognize that those things your brain tries to tell you—you’re the “slowest in the group,” you’ll “never catch up,” other runners are “better than you”—just aren’t true. Some days you’ll be leading the pack, and some days you’ll get dropped. After you see it happen to everyone, you learn to take your days, both good and bad, more in stride.

There Is No Better Cheerleader

Also, when you’re having a bad day, no one can boost your morale quite like a training partner! They know how you feel, because they’ve had bad days too, and they know firsthand how hard your workout is, because they’re doing it, too. Plus, the great part about running is that it’s not a zero-sum game. Especially if the group is training to hit a time goal, you can literally all win.

Seeing Is Believing

Finally, there’s the mentality “if they can do it, I can do it.” This comes from seeing it happen in workouts: You start the workout together and finish it together, and you’re that much closer to achieving your goal. When I’m alone and the pace gets hard, it’s a lot easier to start telling myself things like “I don’t have the talent” and “I just can’t do it.” But on the mornings when I showed up to find three other women raring to go? I wasn’t going to wimp out. And after enough “good days” where I kept up, the “if they can do it, I can do it” mentality started to solidify the belief that I really could run under 2:45.

And I did. I finished the Philadelphia Marathon in 2:44:11—a time that even five years ago I never would have dreamed possible.

But that’s the power of teamwork for you.

Contributing Writer Allison Goldstein is a freelance writer and editor who is endlessly fascinated by the scientific “why” of things.