So let me see if I can keep this straight: I ran in high school with Chris and Steve. Chris ran in college with Paul, who I ran with in Maryland before moving to Connecticut. There, Steve introduced me to Brian, who introduced me to Bob. I ran with the two of them until I moved to Boston, where Bob introduced me to John, with whom I ran until I moved back to Maryland and resumed running with Jim, who used to run with John. Throw in some subplots—Bob passed Jim late in the '88 Olympic Marathon Trials en route to finishing 21st, the same place Chris finished in '92; Brian ran in high school with Charles, brother of my ex-girlfriend Mary; Steve introduced me to the editor of this magazine, Gordon, who ran on a World Cup team with Jim; Brian and Bob ran for the same college as the art director of this magazine, Bill; ad infinitum—and you've got a network with more tenuous connections than America Online.

These links spring to mind when I hear mention of the Kevin Bacon game. That's the one in which participants name an actor or actress, and Bacon, by virtue of his many co-stars, can be conjoined with him or her through no more than six movies. Take, for example, Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. He appeared in "Night Shift" with Michael Keaton, who starred in "Batman" with Kim Basinger, who was tied up in "9 1/2 Weeks" by Mickey Rourke, who, with Bacon, was part of the cast of "Diner."

The crazy thing is that this degree of latent unity is true not just of foppish thespians. The psychologist Stanley Milgram once grouped random pairs of American adults as sources and targets. Each source got the name and address of a target, and was to send a letter to whomever was thought most likely to know the target, along with another letter asking the recipient to do the same, until the target received the original letter. That is, you're told to get a letter to Jane Blow, in San Francisco. You send it to an old lover who lives there, who sends it to a former co-worker who once mentioned meeting a Joe Blow at a party, and so on. In Milgram's study, the most common number of links between source and target was five; the highest was ten, the lowest a mere two. Think how much he would have saved on postage if, assuming my example to be typical, he had used only runners.

That the running community is so circumscribed is one of the sport's greatest appeals. Once out of school, most adults make few new friends. They're the ones, not runners, whose loneliness should be documented in book titles. It's no surprise that the elderly suffer from depression at a higher rate than the rest of the population, given that the advance of the years typically means an ever-receding social network. In contrast, as long as we run, our lives are enriched with a steady infusion of new training partners, race acquaintances and others of both genders and all ages, all of whom help to broaden our social experiences beyond college reminiscing and post-work happy hours. We need look no further for explanations of runners' happy emotional lives than to the bonds created in a group long run.

Indeed, such camaraderie can lead to the outward signs of friendship in those who barely know each other. Roger Robinson has written about what he calls "the freemasonry of runners," in which it's "possible by just putting on a pair of road shoes and shorts to bludge a spare bed in any city in the world." Though not the global traveler that Robinson is, I've nonetheless weaseled my way into free lodging with relative strangers in such locales as Atlanta, New York City, California, Texas, New Hampshire, even Göteberg, Sweden, solely because I run. And I've reciprocated, opening my shower and cupboard to people with whom, upon meeting at least, I have nothing more in common than a fondness for reciting weekly mileage.

Not that I mind running's presumed hospitality. After all, how many other people can say that Bill Rodgers has slept in their bed? By the way, he used to run with my friend Pete, who used to live with Tom, who used to train with my college roommate Ken....

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