QT: How Valuable is an Improvement of One Percent, Really?

If you’re like most runners, and probably most people in general, patience isn’t your strongest suit.

If you have big goals, you know it’s going to take some hard work over time in order to reach your goals.

But if you’re anything like me, you like to see some big chunks of progress on occasion to confirm that you’re on the right path.

While we know that one percent of improvement is still an improvement, it’s easy to overlook that small amount of growth as trivial.

Over time, however, a one percent improvement can be huge!

Stop Thinking Short Term

In the short term, one percent really doesn’t matter that much.

And as runners, we often spend way too much time worrying about the short term.

We worry about our current training cycle or the next race on our calendar much more than we worry about what the next several years (or decades!) of our running will look like.

If we shifted our focus to the long term, where a one percent difference now has a chance to influence the results for years and years, I think we’d value a one percent improvement quite a bit more than most of us currently do!

The farther out our goals are, the more impactful one percent actually is.

Where Can You Get One Percent Better?

Unless you’re living in a fantasy world, you recognize that there are things you can improve upon in your running life.

Even if things are going pretty well, you know that you’re not perfect in everything that you do.

Maybe your diet could be a little better. Or you could improve your strength training routine.

Maybe you can feel your muscles getting tighter by the week, but you just struggle to make time for doing yoga.

Whatever your situation happens to be, you know that there is something you could improve that would help your running in the future.

Stop telling yourself that one percent doesn’t matter because it does matter.

A lot.

One percent improvement, in any area, make a huge difference in the big picture. #runchat Click To Tweet

What is One Area of Your Running You can Improve by One Percent?

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