Content warning: Mentions of body image issues
Looking back, long before I was into running, I was already trail running.
I’ve been formally hiking since 2013, and when I applied for a university mountaineering club, one of the requirements was to pass a series of fitness tests involving running specific distances with time limits. I didn’t enjoy running then as I do now, discovering its joys in 2019 and more so during the pandemic, and only powered through these three runs to pass the requirements.
However, during hikes, whenever the humid jungle gave way to rolling grasslands at higher elevations, something in me clicked. On instinct, my companions and I would start zipping through the grass, swaying like ocean waves, clouds at eye level. It happened in Palawan in 2015; it happened during my 10 or so trips to Rizal’s mountains between 2016 and the pandemic; it happened in Pulag in 2024, not just to me, but to first-time hikers as well.
Some Native Americans consider trail running a form of prayer. Teacher, monk, activist, and Nobel Peace nominee Thich Naht Hanh said that when we harm nature, we harm our own bodies
It seems, like the lost sled dogs befriending wolves in Jack London’s novel “The Call of the Wild,” something primal in us gets awakened in the great outdoors.
The call of the wild
Sam Manalastas-Liberato, a development worker, no stranger to community work and hikes, initially took up running just to join her then-boyfriend (now husband) as he trained for the 2023 leg of the annual Cordillera Mountain Ultra (CMU).
Eventually her motivations changed “from struggling to even finish 5K on the road to joining the CMU. Very new sa’kin ang lahat, trail and even long runs.” What helped was joining her local coffee shop’s run club, where she “discovered the magic of Zone 2 training, which made me enjoy running. Not every run has to be about speed pala.”
Meanwhile, Judy Aroy, a civil servant working at the public health sector shares she’d been running and cycling on the road and also hiking for years when she saw a story from one of her friends trail running. Aroy reached out and her friend invited her to one trail run, which turned out to be a race.
“Hindi casual jog, hindi hike,” laughs Aroy, quipping “kundi race talaga! Ganun kalala ’yung pagkabudol.”
Though there was much sweat, the tears were joyful. Aroy eventually considered trail her main sport, with road as a way to supplement it, a sentiment shared by Manalastas-Liberato.
“Kahit gaano ka pa elite sa ibang sports,” Aroy shares, “huwag mo maliitin ang nature. The mountains will humble you. Kahit trained ka sa road, ibang laro ’pag nasa bundok ka na. You have to adjust, listen, move with, not against, the terrain.”
Manalastas-Liberato recounts how her recovery times are faster after running on the trail versus the road. “Wala masyadong sakit after trail unlike road, where iba ’yung impact niya at ramdam ’yung sakit the following day.”
“If you’re a road athlete,” Aroy smiles, “I believe you owe it to yourself to experience the trail at least once. Baka tulad ko, you’ll find yourself falling in love with the trail you never knew you needed.”
The call of community
“I used to have an unhealthy relationship with running,” Krizia Bondad, a bank worker, tells me over evening tea. We’ve both just come from a day’s work and Bondad, the founder of Trailista Run Club is wearing a trail race tee.
After some pondering, we chalk this up to equating exercise with tiredness and punishment, that it wasn’t supposed to be “something fun.” “Gusto ko saktan ko sarili ko in a productive way. May time na ang payat ko talaga,” Bondad expounds.
“Eventually,” she continues, “na-realize ko na [trail running] ang way ko to escape mga iniisip kong problema. Nagkaroon ako ng deeper connection sa trail running.”
Trail running healed Bondad’s relationship not just with running but also with exercise as a whole: It could be something healing, freeing, social, rather than something pressuring and which incited self-judgment.
As Aroy shared earlier, her journey “started with simple curiosity, not pressure. Ganun ka-powerful ang pagiging curious. That curiosity was enough to move from hesitation into action.”
As a new mindset took hold of Bondad, she eventually realized more people may be in a similar struggle. “What if marami pang tao na gustong maghanap ng outlet nila kaso wala silang kilala sa community?” she muses. “Tapos ako, I have the means, I have know-how. I want to be their go-to person. ’Yun ’yung naging motivation ko [in starting this run club.]
“It’s not just about personal growth but also the community you find,” Judy Aroy ponders. “There’s a raw kindness, a shared understanding that the mountain humbles everyone, no matter how strong or fast you are. You celebrate each other’s victories, at higit sa lahat, you honor each other’s struggles”
Aroy meanwhile shares how at the start, she wanted to “explore more but didn’t have full gear yet. Thankfully, people are so willing to help!” And the community lent hydration packs, trekking poles, and trail shoes. “When it was my turn,” the health worker beams, “I paid it forward, lending my gear to beginners too.”
Taking stock of what she achieved both internally and externally, Bondad recalls: “Medyo may reach na ako. May onti nang credbility, nag-po-podium-podium, ganyan. May following din. Parang good timing. Andiyan [din] ’yung motivation ko, genuine concern for other people in the same boat as me.”
Looking back at her journey from 5K to CMU 2023, Manalastas-Liberato, the development worker, chalks it up to “a mixture of activities, training plans, group runs, group rides, and the people I was with at that time. They all contributed, physically and mentally.”
Trailista Run Club holds regular beginner-friendly trail runs each month. They also organize tours where participants get to visit a new town or locality in the Philippines, centered on a trail run. They’ve also been involved in mountain clean-up drives all as the club tries to set an example of Leave-No-Trace principles.
In the 2024 CMU, Bondad watched from the sidelines, cheering for each of 10 Trailista members who joined. “The kind of support I wish I had, I’m now giving.” We mull over our tea, and Bondad realizes, “perhaps now, I’m getting that support by giving it.”
“It’s not just about personal growth but also the community you find,” Aroy ponders. “There’s a raw kindness, a shared understanding that the mountain humbles everyone, no matter how strong or fast you are. You celebrate each other’s victories, at higit sa lahat, you honor each other’s struggles.”
In contrast to more commercial travel groups that regularly get “joiners,” Bondad and her six-to-seven volunteers managing Trailista get minimal financial compensation from organizing activities.
A comfortable silence follows. I take out my phone and show Bondad a video of my family and I in Mount Pulag.
In it, the sun had long risen and we were heading back to our homestay in the Ifugao and Ibaloi village. This broadest of daylights revealed the valley we had been crossing in the dark just hours ago: a sea of grass meeting a sea of clouds.
“Something took over us,” I told Bondad, and she winked knowingly. In the video, my sister motioned with her arm and began to run across the plateau. The video got blurrier as my cousins and I followed. She paused after an upward crest, and the video stabilized, revealing more of the Cordillera mountain range, the clouds now below us.
“There, you just ran trail, ’yun na ’yun,” Bondad laughed, grinning widely.
Wired for the wild
Trail running doesn’t just seem to naturally follow road running; to run trails is natural, and our bodies seem to intuitively know this. Our ancestors were doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.
Today, science is confirming what we knew for the longest time, that more time in nature is not just for the body but for the mind, too, given how humans evolved. We’ve only largely lived in urban jungles for the better part of 300 years, and despite the creature comforts and conveniences we have, there seems to be something lacking.
Trail running doesn’t just seem to naturally follow road running; to run trails is natural, and our bodies seem to intuitively know this
Aroy muses, “When you’ve been running on the road, you get used to the predictability: flat pavements, distance markers. Trail running teaches you how to be present, a form of moving meditation. Uphills and downhills. You can’t zone out the way you sometimes do on the road. You have to be there, buong-buo. Bawat tibok ng puso at hinga mo, ’yung pagsabay ng ihip ng hangin, sikat ng araw, at paggalaw ng dahon sa mga puno.”
Some Native Americans consider trail running a form of prayer. Teacher, monk, activist, and Nobel Peace nominee Thich Naht Hanh said that when we harm nature, we harm our own bodies.
Manalastas-Liberato laments how “kailangan pa lumayo para lang makatakbo sa nature” when this was default not just for our ancestors but also citizens of Manila’s environs just a little over a decade ago.
She recalls how during weekend trail runs with her husband, a lot of people from the metro join them, musing how “disconnected we are from nature” in recent years. As more runners move from road to trail, it seems the people yearn for green spaces.
She can’t help but recall the state of the mountains witnessed in recent excursions, and how this connects to her work in disaster risk reduction, even in coastal areas.
Perhaps it’s time not just for individuals but for institutions as well to answer the call of the wild.
