Report: 80% of Runners Suffer From Kudos Deficiency

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About 8 in 10 runners are clinically Kudos-deficient, according to a new report—and most of them don’t even know it.

To arrive at that number, scientists examined data from a representative sample of 854 runners, as well as video interviews with those same runners. The subjects, men and women, ranged in age from 15 to 77 and came from all 50 U.S. states.

“What we found was startling,” said Norman Quentin Cook, Ph.D., the lead author of the report. “Some 79.2% (of the subjects) were found to have some level of deficiency of Kudos, including a full 30% who were classified as severely Kudos-deficient.”

Four in five of the runners were unaware of their condition, Cook added.

“That’s the saddest part,” he said. “Not only are most runners lacking enough online praise for noteworthy efforts, but most of them don’t know they’re lacking—or maybe they know something feels off, but they don’t know what.”

The good news, Cook said, was that treating such a condition is simple.

“Runners simply need to give more Kudos to one another,” he said. “All day, every day.”

The report, sponsored by Strava, appears in this week’s issue of The New England Journal of Kudos, which is also sponsored by Strava.