CNN
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Monica Puig gained greater than 300 matches throughout her tennis profession and the sensation afterwards was typically the identical: aid, pleasure, and satisfaction that the weeks and months of sacrifice and preparation had paid off.
In the present day, precisely a yr after shoulder points pressured her to retire aged 28, Puig remains to be capable of revisit a few of these profitable feelings with out selecting up a tennis racket or stepping foot on a court docket.
She’s turned to operating marathons – first in New York Metropolis, then in Boston and London on back-to-back weekends earlier this yr and is already midway in the direction of her aim of finishing all six of the world’s marathon majors by the top of 2024.
“Each time I cross the end line of a marathon and I get a brand new private greatest time, I get emotional, I’ve cried,” Puig tells CNN Sport.
“I’ve simply felt in awe of what I’ve been doing as a result of I might simply simply be sitting on the sofa crying and feeling sorry for myself. However I attempted to channel all of that power that I’ve in the direction of no matter I had been feeling about my profession into one thing extra productive.”
Finishing a marathon, Puig says, feels “very comparable and really totally different” to profitable a tennis match. With tennis, the stakes felt larger when rankings factors, world recognition, and prize cash had been on the road.
However the sense of private satisfaction she will get from operating has endured, serving to to ease the lingering ache of her retirement from tennis.
“It’s extra about exhibiting myself that I didn’t let myself fall into this huge black gap of despair and disappointment once I needed to end my profession so early,” Puig provides.
“I used to be capable of choose myself again up and discover one thing else that motivates me to get off the bed each day, that motivates me to proceed to be robust, match, and have enjoyable on the similar time.”
Puig reached a career-high rating of No. 27 on the earth and gained one WTA Tour title in 2014. Her crowning second arrived two years later when she gained Olympic gold in Rio – Puerto Rico’s first-ever gold medal on the Video games.
As a tennis participant, Puig at all times noticed operating as a type of punishment – by no means enjoyment. It turned a way to clear her head when she was rehabbing from accidents and, over time, she began to extend the space of her runs – three miles turned 5, 5 turned eight, then eight turned half and full marathons.
Now, Puig has additionally set her sights on competing in triathlons, in addition to operating the remaining marathon majors in Chicago, Berlin, and Tokyo. Her first half Ironman – a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, and 13.1-mile run – is in Augusta, Georgia, in September, and she or he plans to race one other again house in Puerto Rico subsequent yr.
An newbie runner and triathlete, it’s a pointy transition from her life as among the finest tennis gamers on the earth, although Puig thinks her expertise of the latter has benefited the previous.
“You might be competing towards your self,” she says of all three disciplines, “you’re your largest enemy or supporter on the market. What you suppose can both push you or it will probably restrict you.
“In tennis, I’m not going to say my psychological fortitude was my energy as a result of quite a lot of the time I didn’t know learn how to take care of adverse ideas, however I really feel like everyone matures at their very own time mentally.
“Doing the marathons and triathlon has actually helped my mentality to develop and to develop this can-do perspective in the direction of every little thing that I do. It’s additionally due to tennis that I’ve a sure self-discipline … All of that self-discipline has actually helped me to remain in form and keep true to my objectives.”
Elbow surgical procedure in 2019 adopted by three shoulder surgical procedures in three years finally signaled the top to Puig’s tennis profession. She performed her first match since 2020 on the Madrid Open final yr, however the shoulder issues continued.
There have been occasions, Puig says, that she couldn’t sleep on the affected facet, such was the ache in her shoulder. Furthermore, the psychological toll of fixed rehab and nearly 4 years away from usually competing on the tour was beginning to mount.
“It felt like I used to be pushing a stone up a mountain and the stone stored squashing me as I stored getting additional and additional,” says Puig.
“I clearly believed that I might come again, I believed in myself sufficient. Final yr, I had full intention of enjoying once more competitively.
“However once I noticed my surgeon after the final time I used to be on the court docket, he stated, ‘Look, I’ve to be trustworthy with you, your shoulder – it’s not doing nicely. And we will’t simply preserve opening up your shoulder to repair it each single time it goes flawed.”
Not able to stroll away from tennis completely, Puig nonetheless hopes to play exhibition matches sooner or later. She returned to the follow court docket not too long ago and needed to mood expectations from followers, who interpreted footage posted on social media as the beginning of a aggressive comeback.
However Puig has remained concerned with the game as a broadcaster, enabling her to interact with the sport otherwise in comparison with her enjoying days.
“Once I commentate or I’m watching matches, I’ve seen that my understanding of the sport has gotten rather a lot higher,” she says. “I really feel like I’m smarter and I can see issues, I can discover issues. I examine the sport rather a lot higher than once I was enjoying.
“My understanding for tennis has grown and I want that I used to be nonetheless enjoying so I might implement a number of the issues that I see and have that information translate onto what I do on the court docket.”
Puig provides that she nonetheless misses tennis, notably when she watches her contemporaries thrive at grand slams.
Together with her shoulder by no means going to be because it was previous to the surgical procedures, she’s come to just accept her physique’s limitations and is honing her swimming approach to face up to the trials of Ironman-distance triathlons.
“I’ve discovered to deal with my shoulder otherwise and figuring out that, if there’s ache, then it’s okay to cease, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to say that you simply’re not feeling 100%,” says Puig.
“Often, once I was making an attempt to return again final yr, I’d play via ache and that wasn’t essentially one thing that felt superb. It was very difficult and concerned quite a lot of tears.”
What she has as a substitute developed over the previous yr is “a brand new life” and “a brand new method of doing issues.”
“I need to proceed to do that for my complete life; I see individuals nicely into their fifties, sixties, nonetheless doing triathlon and doing Ironman,” says Puig.
“That’s one thing that I need to proceed to do … I don’t understand how far I’ll get or something like that, however the sky’s the restrict.”
