#FitnessPH - My First Race After Surgery Was the BPI #BestLifeRun 2026 — and I Have No Regrets

There's something quietly radical about showing up at 3 AM on a Sunday morning — not for a flight, not for an emergency — but to run. Voluntarily. With your officemates.

That was the scene last June 7 at Ayala Triangle Gardens, where the streets of Makati were overtaken not by traffic but by thousands of people in matching corporate race kits, lacing up under streetlights, stretching beside colleagues they mostly see only over Zoom. More than 10,000 runners from over 200 companies and 50 running clubs took to Ayala Avenue for the BPI #BestLifeRun Corporate Race 2026 — and the sheer scale of it, the noise and the energy and the sea of race bibs under the Makati skyline, made it impossible not to feel something.

I was one of those 10,000 — and honestly, just being there felt like a win before the starting gun even fired.

I signed up for the 10KM category, which, if you knew what my last six months looked like, is either inspiring or slightly unhinged depending on your perspective. I had major surgery this past January. The kind where recovery isn't measured in days but in slow, deliberate weeks of relearning what your body can do. I didn't rush it. I didn't try to prove anything ahead of schedule. I just did the work — the rest, the rehab, the patience — because I knew that if I gave my body the time it needed, I'd eventually get back to the life I wanted. That life includes running. And last Sunday morning, on Ayala Avenue, I got it back.

This was my first official race in a long while, and crossing that 10K finish line hit differently because of it. Not because of the medal — though yes, the medal is great — but because of what it represented. Health isn't a given. It's something you protect, something you rebuild, and something you eventually get to celebrate.

The BPI Best Life Run started in 2023 as a bonding activity for BPI employees and their families. What began as an internal wellness initiative has become something genuinely bigger. Now in its fourth year, it continues to champion health and wellness in the workplace while reinforcing support for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being. The mission has scale now. The culture has weight.

Congratulations BPI and to all the runners who participated on this event! See you on the next one. 

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