[jvm___]

Ritual, purpose and community are what's required to build a group.

I cured my own loneliness episode by joining a local running group. It provides the same kind of thing as church. Ritual, we meet every week and there's a few different groups. Purpose, it doesn't feel useless to be improving your fitness level. And community comes when you suffer through a run with others.

Showing up regularly means you start to integrate people into your lives as you know when they skip a week for a vacation or something.

I went from living in my town and not knowing anyone for 17 years to having 20+ friends or people I can say hello to and have a chat.

Just find a local running group, or start one. You want the "meet at Starbucks at 6:30 on Tuesday" ones. Show up and keep showing up and you'll make friends. It's impossible to be on your phone when you run and there's always something running related to keep the conversation going.

[zuzuleinen]

Do you run at the same pace? I'm just curious how can conversations between multiple people running are going on

[jvm___]

Mostly yes, the group stays together. We run road or trail not track. No one is really serious about pace and time, or if you are you treat group runs as social time and do your own thing later.

One group just meets at the start, people go off and do their own thing and then come back to the start for coffee at a cafe. That way everyone from walkers to people doing a long run can all hang out afterwards but not actually run together.

The best are trail runs with 8-10 people, you end up walking the hills and take a short break every 5-10 minutes so you can chat with almost everyone over the hour you're out there.