“If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far, go together,” says the famous maxim, which proves to be a helpful rule of thumb familiar to anyone who has found themselves on never-ending journeys in an Uber Pool. In fact, lessons from a champion marathoner might suggest that such epithets can give us an insight into understanding human resilience.
Eliud Kipchoge is the winner of the last two Olympic gold medals in the marathon, and is regarded as the greatest ever competitor at the distance, holding the world record of 2:01:09. In 2019 in conditions that were a touch too engineered for speed to satisfy record keepers he broke the two-hour barrier, completing the distance in a dazzling one hour 59 and 40 seconds.
For most of us these winning times are difficult to comprehend, the speed sustained by Kipchoge and his competitors seem otherworldly. The idea that someone could complete 26 miles at a little over two hours inspires head scratching mental arithmetic. Four minutes forty per mile, sustained for the whole distance seems genuinely superhuman. But to hear champion Eliud Kipchoge talk, one thing that vividly comes across is a humble sense of humanity.
For many, the experience of completing a marathon has two different stages. The first involves hour after hour of exhausting isolation. Long runs at the weekend, painful hill repetitions, lactic acid inducing sprints. All of this is followed by the glory of race day, when the cheering of crowds envelopes those running in a embracing hug. There’s something about feeling like we’re surrounded by people that is uplifting. The day is coloured with both exhaustion but also euphoria.
It’s strange that when we find such strength in others that our preparation for marathons is so lonely. Tellingly, Kipchoge is dismayed when he hears how most people train for long runs. His own contention is that no one should ever run alone. Speaking to Doctor Rangan Chatterjee Kipchoge he said that ‘to enjoy running you should run as a group’. His concern is that when we run alone the isolation can take us to dark places, that running with others lifts us up: ’You need a group… group running is crucial to keep you on the [mental] course’.
The anthropologist Robin Dunbar told me of one experiment he conducted that beautifully demonstrated the impact of what Kipchoge talked about. First, Dunbar and his team put members of the Oxford University rowing crew through their regular morning workout on individual rowing machines, submitting them to a barrage of tests.
Then, a week later, they repeated the exercise with the same crew, but this time setting the rowing machines out in the formation of a virtual boat. The result, they found, was a doubling in endorphin levels over the previous week. For the rowers feeling like they were doing the activity with others was elevating for their state of mind.
Even though this effect is most potent when we’re around each other, having a sense of connection isn’t just reserved for being in the moment of exercising. There are measurable relationships between our health and our relationships to others. One remarkable study taking in 300,000 heart attack survivors over seven years, found that the single biggest predictor of heart-attack survival was not giving up smoking (the number-two factor), but having stronger social relations. A similar pattern was observed in patients who had been hospitalised with depression: the best mental health outcomes were demonstrated by those who reported having a larger number of social groups in their lives.
The psychologist Robert Putnam went as far as to observe, “The more integrated we are with our community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, depression, and premature death of all sorts.” If we’re thinking of a route to better mental health, then focussing on our connection to others is vital.
Putnam’s summary of his findings is a compelling insight into how to best live our lives. “As a rough rule of thumb,” he said, “if you belong to no group but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half.” Or to put it another way, “If you smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a toss-up statistically whether you should stop smoking or start joining.”
While we might not need the roar of the crowd in our daily lives, remembering the vital part that social connections play in our mental and bodily health is vital. We should allow Eliud Kipchoge’s words to be our guide and remember to enjoy the strength we draw from each other.
Bruce Daisley is the author of Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength
Find out more about the Sweat and Tears campaign and how it aims to promote better physical and mental well-being across the nation, through exercise and hydration.
