I won a state championship in high school tennis — the kind where they hand you a custom-engraved diamond ring. Perfect record, 13-0. It should have felt like everything. It didn’t, not for long.
Six years of competing nationally will do that. The pressure to perform stopped leaving room for the reason I started — by the time I walked away, tennis wasn’t fun anymore, just something I was good at.
Weight training came next, mostly to fill the space tennis left behind — and that slowly turned into a run club invite. Running turned into swimming, then cycling rounded out third. Running was my first endurance love, and somewhere in there, it gave something tennis never had: me against me.
Nobody’s watching the clock. Nobody’s grading the effort. I don’t compete in triathlon the way I competed in tennis. That missing pressure turned out to be the point, not a loss.
What that space actually gave me was room to think — to figure out what I’m even chasing, and find out what my body can do when there’s no ceiling on it. That’s not something tennis, at the level I played, ever had time for.
Plant-based fits in here too, quietly. I’ve been vegan almost my whole life — there’s no conversion story, no single moment it clicked. It’s less common in endurance sport than people assume, though plenty of the best in the world do it — for me it’s just part of what I already am, not the reason for any of this.
Recently, that search got interrupted — an IT band problem, then a fractured wrist. Setbacks like that have a way of making you ask what you’re actually building toward, not just what you’re recovering from.
If I’m honest about “why now,” it’s not poetic — a recent run of setbacks allowed me the time to finally put this into words. But the setback isn’t the point. What I found on the other side of it is.
So here’s the actual reason The Long Run exists: I want to help someone else find their own version of me against me — whatever that looks like for them, whatever sport, habit, or quiet discipline it is. If you’re curious about endurance sport or building healthier habits and don’t know where to start, that’s exactly who this is for.
What are you chasing, and what’s stopping you from starting?
— Iggy
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