Tennis pro Best wireless headphones after shoulder problems forced her to retire in 2022. She’s already completed the 2022 New York City marathon, and this year’s back-to-back Boston and London marathons, according to CNN.
Puig, 29, who won more than 300 matches during her career, including a gold medal at the Rio Olympics, told CNN that instead of feeling sorry for herself that her tennis career ended due to injury, she’s channelling 'all of that energy...into something more productive.'
The tennis star-turned-marathoner ran last year’s Puig competes at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, where she won gold in singles tennis, this year’s Advertisement - Continue Reading Below (under her married name, Rakitt), and then Runners World US.
'Every time I cross the finish line of a marathon and I get a new personal best time, I get emotional, I’ve cried,' Puig told CNN.
She has a goal of completing all six World Marathon Majors by the end of 2024, according to CNN, and she’s already halfway done.
Training for and running marathons has given Puig a renewed sense of self. Completing a marathon, she told CNN, feels 'very similar and very different' to winning a tennis match. There is less on the line with marathoning, so to speak, when prize money and rankings point are no longer factors.
Puig won a WTA Tour title in 2014 and Puerto Rico’s first-ever gold medal at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016. As a tennis pro, she always looked at running as punishment, she told CNN. But now, running has become cathartic while rehabbing from injuries, and her three-mile runs have turned into marathons.
She’s looking ahead to triathlons, including an Ironman, which will test the integrity of her injured shoulder. But her injuries have taught her that she doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) play through the pain.
Puig told CNN: 'I want to continue to do this for my whole life; I see people well into their fifties, sixties, still doing triathlon and doing Ironman.'
