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I knew how to push. I had to learn when to pull back.

I was a Division 3 national champion. Then I spent the better part of a decade injured. Here's why I'm building Toga, a training app for runners who want to push their limits without breaking themselves.

Maryann Gong, founder of Toga, sitting on track bleachers

Hi, I'm Maryann

I'm the founder of Toga, and a runner first. Before Toga I spent my career building consumer fitness and health products. Toga is the app I wish I'd had on my running journey.

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Back on the track

  1. Maryann with her Granada High School cross country teammates after a race
    01
    High school

    How running found me

    Freshman year of high school, a soccer friend told me to join the cross country team. My first race was a hilly two-mile course I had no idea how to pace. So naturally I went out hard, died on the hills, still won by more than a minute, and then promptly spewed my lunch all over the grass.

    I was hooked. I loved racing, the feeling of speed, pushing my limits to see how fast I could go. And I loved to win.

    The drive that made me good turned out to be the same thing that almost ended my running career: I didn't know how to hold back.

  2. Maryann racing for MIT at the NCAA indoor track championships
    02
    MIT

    The part that worked

    By the end of high school I was fast enough to get recruited to MIT, a D3 program and my dream school. Everything there reached a new level of intensity, academics and running alike. Freshman year I set the school record in the 5,000m and was an All-American indoors and outdoors. Sophomore year I set the school records in the mile, 3K, and 5K again, and won a Division 3 national title in the 3,000m.

    For a while, the harder I pushed, the faster I ran.

  3. Maryann's bandaged foot propped on pillows after surgery, next to the after-visit paperwork
    03
    The decade after

    The part that didn't

    While I was running my fastest times, I was also sleeping under five hours a night and barely eating enough. While I was winning, it was easy to believe I was invincible.

    I was not. It started with heel bursitis, then achilles tendinitis, then a stress reaction in my shin. After graduating I spent 11 months unable to run at all, and that was only the beginning of almost another decade of injury cycles: achilles tendonitis, stress fractures, a partial achilles tear, and countless small hiccups along the way.

    It took years of fueling my body right, learning when to hold back, and finally surgery on my left heel before I felt fully able to run healthy again.

  4. Maryann tying her racing shoes on the track
    04
    The road back

    Learning from the past

    I was pushing too much. What I really needed was someone to help pull me back sometimes.

    The key to running is consistency, which means thinking about the long term, not just the next race or a single season. It took me many years and many injuries to learn the thing I'd tell my younger self now: knowing when to take it easy can be the hardest part.

  5. Maryann on the track at Icahn Stadium after a Twilight 5000 race
    05
    Now

    The next chapter

    I'm finally back running stronger and faster than before, and most importantly, healthy. This chapter, I'm chasing two goals: qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the marathon, and building Toga, the training app that helps ambitious runners push their limits while staying healthy.

Who I'm building for

Serious runners with real lives

Toga runners are serious, whatever their pace. They have real goals and real, busy lives. The runner who's out at 5 a.m. before a brutal work day. The parent squeezing in training whenever they can. They're chasing a first marathon, a PR, a BQ, or an Olympic Trials qualifier.

If that's you, what stands between you and your goals is almost never drive. It's finding and making the best use of your time. It's staying healthy. It's keeping all the balls rolling without running yourself into the ground.

What Toga does

Most fitness tools are built to motivate you to push harder. Toga runners push themselves. We help you know when to hold back.

Toga builds personalized, adaptive training plans around your goals and your life, with running, strength, and injury prevention that adjust as you go. It syncs with Garmin, Coros, Apple Health, Strava, and more. It tracks the aches you'd otherwise ignore, watches for patterns, and reminds you to do the prehab you'd otherwise skip. Toga keeps track of the little things so you can stay focused on training hard.

And even though Toga will pull you back when it needs to, it will still help you train hard, run more, and run faster. The point was never to run less. The point is consistency and staying healthy for the long term, so you can keep training and actually reach the goal. To still be running, and still getting better, years from now.

That's the kind of intensity I believe in: the kind that lasts.

— Maryann

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