Hi, this is Debbie Boyle's coach at Mojo for Running with episode number 33, the value of running friends.

It's great if you're intrinsically motivated to get out and run.

For 25 years, I ran solo 95% at the time and I thought I was happy with that.

Then my non-running life changed in several ways over a period of years, and that drove me to find a running group.

The first event, and really the only life-changing one, was that I lost my sister.

She died suddenly at age 48.

That sounds harsh to say she died.

But I'm not a fan of euphemisms, especially when it's something

as tragic as losing my sister. I never say passed away, because it sounds too gentle.

There was nothing gentle about it, for me, my family, or anyone who knew Lori.

My runts became cathartic, healing trips through the woods, and many of them would have needed to be solo runs anyway, as I coped with what had happened. But I also started to understand that I needed friends around me, lots of friends. At that point in my life, I realized that while I had many friends on a certain level, they were mostly more of acquaintances than friends.

I spent little, if any, time with them outside of work.

I had never felt as much stress, as much heartbreaking emotion.

It wasn't depression so much as a sense of crushing overwhelm.

I needed the strength, the support, the empowering effect of friendship.

Not long after that, I took an online test. I can't remember what it was called, something like the real age test.

You had to answer something like 100 questions on everything from diet to exercise to the number of friends

you had to how often I spent time with those close friends to family, how often I spent

times with my family, etc. It even asked if I had lost a family member or close friend.

In the post-test explanation, it explained that certain life factors had the psychological impact of making you physiologically older.

That was the case with losing a close friend or relative.

I can't remember how many years, but the formula added several years of age if you had lost a friend or relative within the past year.

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