It's official - Rivalry is good for bringing out better running performances

I read an article last week entitled "To Run Faster, Get a Rival" which made a lot of sense.  Basically some research from the New York Stern school of business indicated that those runners running against rivals or who had rivals used this competition boost their own performances. The author of the research Gavin Kilduff says of competitive spirit, "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."  Now anyone who is in a running club knows intuitively that this is true. Some of the best rivalries are within a club and I know that if a club member is right behind me or within reach in a race I will make an extra effort to beat them.

However with the advents of ranking systems for age this is enhanced beyond the club.  Using a ranking site such as Run Britain  it is possible to form rivalries with other runners without them knowing.  This is how it works.  You do a race and the results are posted onto Run Britain.  You see who is just ahead of you and then you compare your performances head to head on the site.  So the next race you enter you know how they have been performing and you then can make an extra effort to get ahead of them.  Below is an anonymised example.

The other change for older runners is the whole age category ranking system so that you can use Run Britain to find out where you are in the national rankings for different distances and events throughout the country. 

In addition to the rankings there are great sites like Strava that allows you to create segments or runs or whole runs that other runners then join a leaderboard for. So say you did a run in London and someone else had created a segment on that run when you uploaded your run to the Strava site you would be told where you were on the leaderboard.  Sometimes you are at the top of a leaderboard for segment - King of the Mountain or Course Record holder and sometimes you get deposed.  This increases rivalry and thus your performance.

I have been known to explore the segments in an area I am visiting to make sure I run it and see how I compare.