The American Time Use Survey is produced by the U.S. government. It’s been running for over twenty years, and each year it surveys tens of thousands of Americans, asking them to account—minute by minute—for how they spent the previous day: sleeping, working, eating, watching TV, reading, exercising.

When the most recent data came out, the newspapers I read honed in on one statistical trend. Over the last couple of decades, the percentage of Americans who read for pleasure has declined by roughly 40%. That’s not a small behavioral shift. That’s a meaningful change in how people choose to spend their free time. As someone who genuinely enjoys reading for fun, that statistic gave me pause. Reading has always felt like a way to slow the world down and relax, and seeing fewer people make room for it feels concerning, even if the reasons—screens, distraction, faster lives—are easy to understand.

Curiosity then took me over. If this data could tell us something meaningful about reading, I wondered what it might reveal about running.

Running isn’t a headline category in the American Time Use Survey. You have to look a little deeper. When you do, the picture becomes clear. Only a very small percentage of Americans run on an average day. Not exercise. Not walk. Run. When researchers break down the data, estimates land somewhere around 1–2% of the population running on any given day. Even among people who exercise at all, running is a relatively small slice.

That’s easy to forget when you’re inside the running world. Your social feed is full of runners. Your weekends revolve around early alarms, weather checks, long runs, and race calendars. It creates the illusion that running is common. The data says otherwise.

That’s the point I want to make. If you run, you are part of a small, quiet group. You’ve chosen an activity that is hard and inconvenient, that requires consistency and a willingness to be uncomfortable, and that offers no immediate reward. No one makes you do it. Most people don’t choose it.

That doesn’t make you better than anyone else. It does make you different. Running is one of those rare pursuits that improves your health while also strengthening something less visible. It builds resilience. It sharpens focus. It teaches patience. It gives structure to chaos and calm to noise in a world that increasingly avoids hard things.

From the inside, it can feel ordinary. Just another run. Just another week. From the outside, it’s rare. The next time it feels like everyone around you is a runner, remember the data says otherwise. You’re doing something healthy. You’re doing something difficult. You’re doing something most people won’t. That’s worth being proud of.

Best wishes on chasing your running goals!