Why I Run Alone

For every woman who wants to make her running mates into bar mates, I suspect there is another who runs to be alone with herself, a singular state that may be attainable only on the trail, far from the demands of home and office. All running requires is a pair of shoes and the will. Group running means co-ordinating schedules and slotting yet another event into the daily grind, sullying the sport’s autonomy, which is the best thing about it....

This is what social psychologists call social facilitation: your performance on certain tasks improves when you do them with others, or in front of an audience. Runners set records not during training, but in races, buoyed by other runners and the observing crowd. But the participant must be good at the task for social facilitation to kick in. If the subject isn’t skilled, the effect of the audience is social inhibition – a decrease in speed and accuracy....

I run to reach that blankness as the sun comes up, or in the middle of the day, when, if I’m locked in to the groove, even the traffic becomes invisible. Slogging through many kilometres to find flow and then running into a flock of chipper, chattering runners – possibly literally – is jarring; it’s like the cast of Glee crashing the Buddhist temple...

I completely get this article. I run trails to alleviate the boredom of pavement, and I will pretty much do anything to avoid other peoples interaction as much as possible. I leave the mp3 player for the gym so I can hear the dogs and bicycles and other people to shorten the time I'll have to spend with the people around me.

Or, maybe I just don't like people. I had to talk to three (THREE!) people at the grocery store today, and while walking out, I was realizing how that was way more than I had prepared myself mentally for. One day, there's a chance I might just become a full blown agoraphobe.