The key to becoming a better running might just be your friend squad.

A study published in Nature Communications found evidence to suggest that friends who push themselves to run father and faster influenced other friends to do the same — just by being running buddies.

Essentially, positive exercise behavior is contagious.

Good running habits could be socially contagious.
The key to getting a head of the pack, may be training with a better running buddy. Pixabay

The researchers looked at the habits of 1.1 million runners around the world over a period of five years.

Knowing that its possible runners could be pairing up because of their comparable running habits, researchers wanted to rule out coincidence. Since bad weather can deter runners, they compared friend pairs in different regions of the world to see if weather made a difference.

The found that friends of runners who typically run an extra 10 minutes, influenced friends to run an extra 3 minutes — even when the weather was bad. Also, the study found, when one friend goes faster, the other tends to pick up the pace.

Interestingly, the researchers found that not all fast-running friendships are created equal. Both men and women influence men, but only women influence other women.

The study didn’t look into the factors that could be causing the behavior, but they were confident in their findings that running is “socially contagious,” lead study author Sinan Aral, PhD, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology told The New York Times.

We already knew that a jog is part of a healthy life, but now it can be part of your social life, too.

And be sure not to get a running buddy like this

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Meghan is a full-time writer exploring the fun facts behind food. She lives a healthy lifestyle but lives for breakfast, dessert and anything with marinara. She’s thrown away just as many meals as she’s proud of.