Hey everyone and welcome to you today's episode of the Run to the Top Extra Kick Daily Podcast. I am your host, one of the coaches at Runners Connect,

Haley Month and it's great to talk to you guys today.

So I hope you were all saying safe and well and at home. I hope

the running is going well and perhaps you are able to take part in some of these virtual races that are going on.

And that's what I want to talk to you guys about today,

because I know from some of the athletes that I coach and some of the runners

connect athletes that a lot of you are finding that you aren't performing quite as

well in solo time trials as you hope.

Perhaps you just don't feel great.

And of course there is this effect of the stress and the anxiety of the current pandemic.

But there is another reason that's been studied and is backed up by research

why running alone might not result in such good performances as if you were running in a

traditional race. Solo time trials and actually even training alone can feel a lot harder than running in-person

races or training with others. Most of us can relate to training alone or

racing alone feeling more difficult.

Some of us might not have had much experience of this until this year, but it is a consideration and I recently even saw that Kip Trogae even finds training alone harder.

He's well known for his big group around him, the group that is thought to be one of the big

secrets of his success and he's actually struggling without his team to train with. But did you know that scientists have actually

studied this and have evidence to back it up? A study from earlier this year in

the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance has some insights.

In this study they looked at male runners who completed two 10K races.

In one of these 10K races, the male runners performed alone on the track and in the other they competed against

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