The Bond Beyond Miles: How Training Partners Enrich Our Lives

by Scott Douglas

All hail training partners! When you’re low on mojo, they help you get out the door. When you’re not having a great day, they help you see things through. And when you’re purposefully pushing yourself, they help you work just a little harder.

But none of those are the greatest benefit to working out with others. That honor goes to the personal bonds that form.

Something borderline miraculous happens when we ride, run, hike, or otherwise move together. Even the most introverted among us find ourselves chatting away like we’re 1.3 drinks into happy hour. And that makes sense—feel-good brain chemicals circulate at greater levels when we move. Studies have found that one class of those chemicals, endocannabinoids, increase the most during moderate-intensity workouts, which are exactly the sort of outings training partners often gather for.

There are now therapists who, aware of the tongue-loosening effects of shared exercise, conduct sessions while walking or running with patients. A leader of this small but mighty movement, Sepideh Saremi, says there’s another reason mobile sessions lead to greater intimacy: There’s no enforced eye contact when you’re side by side or one in front of the other. Related, I’ve had some of the most intimate conversations of my life running pre-sunrise or post-sunset with someone.

But there’s more going on here than conversation. A friend and I once ran an 11-miler in which the only words spoken were him saying, “It’s okay” to indicate it was safe to cross a road. Seventy-five minutes of silence in close proximity to a kindred spirit can be far more comfortable than a few moments of conversation with an instant irker. When I worked in an office, I marveled at how the people I ran with once or twice a month knew me much better than did my 40-hours-a-week colleagues. Also, consider the nature of the workout partner relationship—it’s mostly present- and future-focused, in contrast to many adult friendships that started however long ago and are now sustained mostly by habit and reminiscing.

Thirty years ago, my running buddies were all, like me, young, fast guys. My pool of partners has broadened as I’ve aged and slowed, and that has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. The best friend I’ve made this century is a woman who is 15 years my junior. She’s an extroverted social worker; I’m an introverted writer/editor who has worked from home for 20+ years. I don’t know that we would have become friends other than by happening to start training together. We ran together on the morning of her wedding, and we ran together a few days before her husband died. Both further cemented a bond that started with a shared love and has progressed to love, pure and simple.