1% Better

First a disclaimer: The common sentiment among some ultrarunners that I regularly bounce ideas off of is that a developed athlete can get roughly 3-5% better throughout any given training cycle. I use the phrase training cycle vaguely here on purpose because for some a training cycle may be a full 6 months stepping up in distance to their first 100 miler or it may be a dedicated 16 week training block in search of a PR.

I also use the rough “3-5% better range” because that number will be predicated on a lot of different variables. For starters are we talking about their VO2 Max, Lactate Threshold, general fitness, pace when running conversationally? All of these variables will effect this arbitrary percentage we’ve come up with.

Not to get too bogged down in the first 5 sentences of this post, but broadly speaking, some of those different variables may also be how long an athlete has been training, the amount of time an athlete is able to train weekly, their day to day stressors in both frequency and intensity, and/or their current ability (you make more rapid progress as a newbie than when you’re a seasoned veteran). The reality is it could be much higher at 10%+ for a less developed athlete and possibly lower for someone who is moving out of their athletic prime and placing their life focus on another area.

Since there’s a lot of nuance in this percentage I’ll just be using it as a placeholder for what is likely an unknown number without the backing of an absurd amount of funding and time spent in a lab.

Whew, now that the disclaimer is out of the way:

Obviously that isn’t an all inclusive list but I digress so I can get to the main point… if an athlete wants to progress faster than the rough standard of 3-5% how can they, and I suppose a question I can more easily answer, how did I do it?

As someone who has historically been roughly in the front of the mid-pack at most of my races, my perspective or protocol for what I did may not seem the most useful, but keep in mind that when I first started running I too was in the 13:30+ minute per mile range for most of my easy, flat runs just a few short years ago.

While someone who has aspirations to be on the podium at all of their races may be better suited to consuming content from people who are already pros or at least consistently on the podium at their local races, I still think the sentiment and ideology behind what I did to be useful for the majority of ultra runners.

To go from my first 50k finish of just over 9 and a half hours on a sidewalk loop course to being able to roughly cut that finish time in half on a much more technical course in less than a year I think is worth diving into.

To start, there’s the most simple answer of consistency. I know, I know, I’m breaking the internet’s cardinal sin of not claiming that I have “4 Unexpected Tips to Get You FASTER!!!”, but let’s be honest, if you can’t be consistent in your training you are dramatically stunting your growth.

However, the silver lining is if you currently aren’t very consistent in your training whether through life circumstances, laziness, or chronic injury (me) then there’s plenty of fitness to be had when you can sort that out.

The main point of this article lies just beyond consistency and that is this question that I asked myself constantly over the past few years…

“What if I make everything outside of my training 1% better every week?”

This internal litmus test for myself was often then followed by these clarifying questions:

“Can I make my sleep 1% better this week?”

“Can I optimize my diet 1% further this week?”

“Can I make myself 1% less stressed whether through fixing something simple or just letting it go?”

I would venture to guess that there are many more similar questions that one could ask themselves in the same vein, but these are the 3 specifics that would frequently come to mind first.

Assuming I’m doing everything right in training through the structure, balancing the total volume, and adding intensity where necessary, where can the extra gains come from to reach the front pack, the podium, and hopefully my full potential?

Well if I sleep on average 6 hours and 30 minutes per night, would I be more recovered and less injury prone if I could squeak out another 15-20 minutes every night this week?

If I take an extra hour to finish that house project my wife really wants done and it’s no longer taking up mental bandwidth would I feel less stressed throughout the evening hours? (Or can I just ignore it? Don’t recommend this as it brings on new, very justified stressors)

To be clear, all of these things will require some sort of tradeoff. If you choose not to make that tradeoff and are happy with the way your running is progressing then keep doing your thing!

But for me, I had a lot of internal dialogue that was rooted in feelings of inadequacy about my running performances. In order to quell those voices I figured I could take one of two routes…

I could sit with my thoughts in meditation and let go of my made up expectations, or I could use my frustration as fuel to optimize more of my life around my running.

I chose the latter.

Again to be clear, I’m not saying I necessarily made the right choice in the broad scheme of things but for that season of my life I did the best that I could with the available information by choosing to optimize more around running.

Why I chose to ignore the first option is definitely a much longer discussion for another time, but at the end of the day I’m now in a position where I’m substantially happier with what I’m capable of doing as a runner, injuries not withstanding, and I fully believe that had I not found ways outside of training to compound my growth then I would have taken much longer to get to where I am today.

I prefer to treat this as more of a documentary piece than a hard stance on what YOU should be doing. I don’t like telling people what to do unless they are one of my athletes.

That being said, I think most people would agree that if you were to ask yourself, “Is it more beneficial to doomscroll in bed for 15 minutes before going to sleep, or would that extra sleep compound over the coming weeks to make me better?”, there is a very simple answer that we often choose to ignore.

So here’s the main takeaway:

If we can make ourselves 1% better every week in the areas that tangentially support our running I think it isn’t a stretch to say that we can all blow that 3-5% better out of the water.