From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishrun up against something/somebody phrasal verbPROBLEMto have to deal with unexpected problems or a difficult opponent The museum has run up against opposition to its proposals. → run→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
run up against • When scientists attempt to unravel the mysteries of the past they always run up against a brick wall.• I never run up against anything like this.• In this it occasionally ran up against other states with their own sense of destiny.• But they know they ran up against remarkable circumstances.• Whatever plan he dreams up is bound to run up against the ambitions and obstinacy of a lot of powerful colleagues.• But here we run up against the difficulty that this formulation appears to derive a prescriptive conclusion from two factual premisses.• Time and time again they have run up against unsurmountable problems of distributing and getting the drugs accepted.From Longman Business Dictionaryrun up against somebody/something phrasal verb [transitive] to have to deal with unexpected problems or a difficult opponentWe ran up against some unexpected opposition. → run→ See Verb table 