For many of us, just getting on the runners and hitting the road for a run is enough of a win, but for those of us chasing personal bests, fastest 5ks or eyeing up a marathon, shaving minutes or even seconds off your finishing time is a hobby in itself.
Running clubs have boomed in popularity, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic, and now Strava - the running, cycling and hiking tracking app - is jokingly called the next best social media platform.
But are running clubs really all they're cracked up to be, or would you be as well off with just yourself and your tunes of choice?
Dr Lee-Ann Burke, a Lecturer in Economics, at University College Cork and Mary Jennings, a running coach with ForgetTheGym.ie, joined Today with Claire Byrne to break down whether joining a club is worth it.
Burke has authored a new research paper called Smells Like Team Spirit, which tracked more than 200,000 marathon runners and found that people who run as part of a running club have dramatically better results.
Burke was inspired to tackle the project based on her own experience of running for 25 years. She noticed on some of her runs that "club runners were passing me out all the time", which got her wondering whether there was scientific backing for such differences in performance.
She began by analysing the Dublin and London Marathon results stretching back over five years, which gave her more than 206,000 finisher results.
"I found that club runners are significantly faster than non-club runners. Intuitively, we may well have known it, but now we can put figures on it, we can quantify it", she says.
She broke the results down into various age categories, and found that in the 18-40 year old bracket, women were 30 minutes faster on average, and men 40 minutes faster, over the full marathon distance. The average finishing time for a young man in that bracket with no club was four hours and 16 minutes, whereas for a young man in a club it was three hours and 36 minutes.
"That's a significant improvement."
Of course, she says, the reasons are instinctively recognisable: knowledgeable coaches, that team spirit and a routine, something that Jennings agrees with.
"If you're surrounded by people who are following the same goal, who have good structure, they're going consistently out at the same time, they've coaching, you're learning from everyone else's ups and downs as well as just your own, you get a much broader experience, I suppose, of whatever goal it is you're aiming for, whether that's a 5k now or a marathon.
"Working together makes everything easier, I think that's the bottom line."
Jennings notes that for many of us, when we find time to invest in ourselves and give ourselves time, can find it hard to see that motivation through. "If you're depending all the time on your own motivation and willpower, that can drop off quite quickly, so having that group consistency", she says, goes a long way.
To listen back to the full interview, click above.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
