Pick a rival to improve your running performance: study

Entering a fun run? Pick a rival and try to beat them, suggest researchers who found that runners who have rivals tend to perform better in races.

Gavin Kilduff from New York University identified three pairs of rivals who got similar race times in the same US running club races over three years.

When he studied the race results, he found the runners got better results in the races that featured their rival.

"I think some people may find it surprising that runners actually pick one and another out at these kind of races but my experiences speaking with them suggests they indeed do," Kilduff said.

"In a 5km race, a runner would be expected to run roughly 25 seconds faster if at least one of his or her rivals was also in the race, as compared to if none of his or her rivals were present."

Past research has suggested that competition can be detrimental to motivation but Kilduff said his study suggests that having a distinct rival could be very motivating.

"I suspected that rivalry might have very different consequences from the kind of coerced laboratory competition that characterised most prior research," he said.

Kilduff also surveyed runners online to find out about their attitudes to rivalry and said the runners who had picked rivals out of the pack said it motivated them to train hard and race faster.

He found that the average runner has three rivals with rivalries most common between runners who were a similar age and gender, who tended to compete in the same races and who had achieved similar results in the past.

"How we behave in competition situations depends on our relationship and history of interaction with our opponent," Kilduff said.

"This suggests that we may be able to boost our own levels of motivation and performance by either forming rivalries or harnessing the ones we already have.

"It might also get us to think about whether other individuals in our lives may view us as their rivals."

But Kilduff warned that other studies have shown that people are more likely to enage in unethical or risky behaviours when trying to beat a rival.

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Source: Eurek Alert Author: Kimberly Gillan; Approving Editor: Wade O'Leary.