Running Alone Or With Groups?

Last weekend, I had spoken to a few people about my running and marathon goal, and they were quite surprised to find out that I am doing all of my running on my own.  Both of them have run marathons, but trained and ran the race with a training partner.

In the book that I recently finished - Hal Higdon's Marathon - The Ultimate Training Guide - he talks about the many training groups that he coaches around the Chicago area to prepare for the Chicago Marathon (this also seemed to be the case with a few of the people that were focused on in the Sprit of the Marathon movie).

I got to thinking...is it out of the ordinary to be doing most of my runs solo?  Am I missing something by not running with a training partner or training group?

So - I've posted a brief survey on the right column of the blog (right under my photo).  Please let me know how you run!