There are two distinct groups of runners — the herders and the soloists. I just made up those terms but here’s what I’m talking about:
If you’re a runner you generally stick to either solo running or running with a group. Sure, you might dabble in one or the other occasionally, based on circumstance, but if you run alone it’s because you like to be alone and if you run in a group it’s because you’re better with a pack.
Both soloists and herder mentalities have their advantages and disadvantages — running solo means it’s just you, your music of choice and the road (or treadmill if that’s your thing) and the entire world essentially disappears for a while. Solo running allows a person to zone out. There are performance benefits as well. When you’re hoofing it solo, you can pay closer attention to form, breathing, and pace. It also prevents a runner from attempting to do more than they want to, or should, because there’s no one around going “come on wuss, one more mile.”
Here’s the benefits of running with a pack — you’re forced to do it. You’re forced to show up. You’re forced to run a little longer, run a little faster, run places you normally wouldn’t and be social (instead of running by yourself like a millennial Forest Gump). This is all positive peer pressure even works on a subconscious level. It’s a concept called “social facilitation.” A person will push themselves harder when they feel they’re dogging behind the rest of the group.
I’m a soloist. Almost 100% of the time.
Over the past few months, I’ve completed several fitness tasks — from walking everywhere to completing a combat fitness course to running a 5K and dedicating it people from my past. All three of those enterprises involved a solo mindset. Sure, other people were in the general area of the activity but I didn’t know anyone in the combat class, wasn’t acquainted with a soul in the 5K and knew absolutely zero people walking through the streets of New York.
For the final leg on my quest for the fittest summer ever, I figured I should enlist a few friends. It was time to join the herd. I put out a call to my fellow BroBible editors to join me on a run across the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge links the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Finished in 1883, the bridge’s construction took 14 years, involved over 600 workers and cost, at the time, over $15 million. That’s roughly $320 million in today’s dinero. An estimated 150,000 vehicles and pedestrians cross the bridge every day. And now, I was hoping, it would hold about five or six more.
I was wrong.
While all my fella editors showed incredible enthusiasm for the idea, few actually bothered to show up for the run. And by “few” I mean all of them bailed except for one — Matt Keohan. So I laced up my ASICS GEL-Quantum 360 and ran the 2.2 miles (back and forth total) across the Brooklyn Bridge. During the short and incredibly crowded run, I thought about all of the activities of the past summer and how they kind of changed the way I live my life.
Walking everywhere for an entire week made me realize I don’t want to walk around and I want to make enough money to buy an insane car or at least be able to afford Uber. Walking sucks. In combat fitness class, I learned that I’m still physically able to move around the way I did in college. I also learned I might have lasted longer in the military than I ever thought I could. I figured I’d only last a couple days but I think I could have toughed it out for a least a long weekend. Running that 5K and thinking about friends past and present made me realize I’ve lived a pretty solid life, had the honor to hang with some great people, and that sometimes we’re not meant to stay connected to people forever.
The Brooklyn Bridge run taught me that it’s sometimes good to go out of your comfort zone and try new things. I’d never would have run the bridge if it weren’t for this summer challenge and I probably wouldn’t have asked for people to go along for the run because I’m a soloist at the core.
But the most important lesson I learned in all this, and one I probably knew all along, is that everyone on the BroBible staff — with the exception of myself and Matt —is lazy as hell.