One year ago, On asked runners to take a breath.

At a moment when run culture felt like it was spiraling into endless Strava segments, mileage flexing, and performance theater, the brand launched SOFT WINS in February 2025 as a way to reset our minds.

It was a campaign built around a surprisingly simple message: maybe we should stop being so hard on ourselves and add a bit of grace to our workouts.

The brand thought runners were being so hard on ourselves, they even enlisted the ultimate ambassador for kindness, Sesame Street’s Elmo, to make the point.

We liked it. Elmo was a cute add and as athletes, we’re all too hard on ourselves.

From missed workouts, to bad days at the track, we love to live in the negative. And the campaign spoke to runners across the every part of their journey. Progress doesn’t have to look perfect and running shouldn’t be a punishment.

It was a soft landing place for a sport that sometimes forgets to breathe or when brands push, Just Do It or Go One More on you.

Fast forward a year and On is changing the conversation again.

The brand’s new campaign, Real Energy, takes the same empathy but pushes it forward again.

Instead of asking us to ease up, it asks a different question: why do we run in the first place? The answer, according to On, isn’t hustle. It’s the energy we feel.

Running Beyond the Performance Theater

Run culture has grown quickly over the last decade. Social media turned run clubs into global communities that many people love and many people hate on. Platforms like Strava annoyingly gamified “what is effort” and suddenly, the morning jog has become something you have to post or “it dIdN’t HaPpEn.” We fucking hate that.

That growth has been exciting but also created a kind of performance theater, where the lines between running for yourself and running for the feed blur.

Especially in Austin where its rare to find a run club that DOESN’T post 15 professional photos after every Tuesday 5 miler.

Real Energy pushes back on all this.

The campaign centers on a simple idea: the reason people run isn’t because of how it looks, it should be because of how it feels. That mental clarity after a tough workout or the momentum it carries into the rest of the day.

Real Energy for us is the pain you feel in your legs hours later. Its the feeling of, damn, that was a burner.

The campaign launched a short 1-minute film following the quieter parts of running life: like early alarms, empty streets, and late-night miles. On Athlete Luke McCann appears not as a superheroe but as someone moving through the rhythms that make up every runner’s day.

It’s not my favorite short and I wish they’d really put some Real Energy and grittiness into it, but I get the point.

The Community Layer

But Real Energy isn’t just a film or a footwear launch, which, let’s face it, that is what this is about – the Cloudmonster 3 line, it’s also showing up in the real world.

This spring, On will also launch the On Squad Race, a global relay series designed to bring teams of runners together across twenty cities. The format is simple but demanding: squads of four runners each complete a relay-style challenge on spiral courses that test both speed and endurance.

Six hundred squads will compete across the series, beginning in Beijing and culminating in a global finale in Los Angeles.

The point isn’t just racing but this collective energy On has been trying to foster the last few years.

Relay formats do something that solo races rarely do, they pull running back into a shared experience. One runner’s effort feeds the next. The rhythm of the team matters more than the individual split. It’s why we love Zilker Relay’s every summer.

On Squad Race is a fitting extension of the campaign’s message.

Running is personal but it’s rarely solitary and the real energy you put into each session is often the real energy you get back. And it goes beyond running and into life.

As always, stay moving.