Something New for Run-Crazy Filipinos: Backyard Ultra Marathoning

Human State Club, in partnership with Strong Group Sports, co-presented RITES last month. Dubbed the first of its kind here in the Philippines, it brought together 44 runners at the Ammah Estate in Ibaan, Batangas who competed in a backyard ultra format, which offered something new to running-obsessed Filipinos.

Participants were grouped into teams of four and were given one hour to complete a designated loop. Each member worked to cover as much distance as possible with every lap they finished counted for their collective’s cause. They did it all over again at the top of each succeeding hour until only one runner remained. From the 4 a.m. gun start until the last competitor completed their final lap, RITES put everyone’s endurance, strategy, and resilience to the test.

After conquering loop after loop all day, battling exhaustion, and willing themselves to keep going even when their bodies were already begging them to quit, the finish line ultimately was all up to them.

The course itself was designed to complement the backyard ultra format. Every loop was challenging enough to test the runners without turning the race into a simple battle against terrain. “We really wanted to set the vibe and create an environment where people could feel what it’s like to be part of the Human State Club,” says Strong Group Creatives Director Janette Calub. “It wasn’t just about the event itself—we wanted everyone to experience the energy, the culture, and the sense of community that comes with being part of it.”

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Not everybody had experience as an ultramarathoner but that didn’t stop them from putting one foot in front of the other. “Actually, maganda yung route pero hindi namin ine-expect na matatapos namin kasi unli yung run,” said 25-year-old student Roy Laudit. “Basically, hindi kami ultra marathon na runner pero nagtiwala kami sa team na matapos. Solid yung route at yung venue sa Ibaan.”

Trusting one another helped give teammates that much needed push to keep going at RITES. It was a mix of runners equipped with experience of logging long distances as well as participants who were discovering just exactly how long they were willing to keep going.

“First time ko nagawa ‘to na isang araw na takbo. Mainit pa,” said 32-year-old Jose Roxas Fabito, Jr. of We Ken Run. The heat and fatigue were factors they all needed to overcome with every loop but there was also real life happening right outside the course in Batangas and for 19-year-old Rei Abel, it was hard not to think of the responsibilities that awaited him the day after the race. “May trabaho kami sa susunod na araw. After nito, matutulog na kami,” said Abel.

The race finally concluded at 9 p.m. with Coros x WeKneadAthletes emerging as the winning team. Abel together with Dean Cunanan, Ian Borres and Rovic John Deyto completed a total of 164 laps, covering 229.6 kilometers in 15 hours, 46 minutes and 16 seconds. The Brooks Team composed of Laudit, Raisen Camba, Fino Herrera and Cyrus Corpuz finished second with 162 laps, covering  226.8 kilometers in 15 hours, 56 minutes and 31 seconds. Rounding out the podium was We Ken Run composed of Fabito, Bryan Cal, James Darrel Orduña and James Aranas finishing with 161 laps, covering 225.4 kilometers in 15 hours, 59 minutes and 54 seconds.

Human State Club is a soon-to-be-launched state-of-the-art gym in Greenhills built on the belief that fitness is not just about physical transformation but, more importantly, about the people who help you through the difficult parts of the journey. It wasn’t just about the number of loops completed, the distance covered, or the time it took to complete all that. It was about making it back to the line after each lap. Human State aims to become a community that helps people pursue their goals—whatever those may be.

“Running is universally known to be an individual sport. Your pace, your distance, your time. With RITES, we wanted to see what happens when you take something that personal and make other people depend on your effort,” said Human State Club founder Jared Lao. “A lot of that came from growing up with team sports. There’s a different feeling when you’re going through something difficult together, knowing that what you do affects more than just yourself. We wanted to bring some of that feeling into running.”

The event was born from the desire to take the traditionally individual nature of running and turn it into something more collective but the idea behind RITES goes beyond the race. “The goal has always been bigger than running. We want RITES to represent what Human State Club stands for beyond the four walls of the club. It gives us a way to create experiences around those ideas without being limited to a physical space,” Lao said.

As the new player on the field, Human State Club does not want to rely on just having more equipment or amenities compared to other gyms. It hopes to create an environment where different forms of movement, training and recovery coexist.

“For us, the difference isn’t about having more equipment or claiming we’re better than every other gym. Human State Club was never designed as just a gym in the first place,” Lao said. “We want to build an ecosystem around the different ways people move and take care of themselves. A place where you can train seriously, play a sport, recover, or try something completely different, with all of it existing naturally under one roof.”

Lao is the youngest son of Philippine National Volleyball Federation President Frank Lao and brother of former Ateneo Blue Eagle Jacob Lao. A product of La Salle Green Hills, Lao graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in Restaurant Entrepreneurship. Apart from athletics, the Lao family is also very well known in the restaurant industry and is behind some of the finest Asian cuisine brands in the metro.

The youngest Lao sibling grew up playing basketball and golf and in recent years, has been competing internationally as a HYROX PRO athlete. Having been immersed in competitive sport from a very young age and coming from a family whose patriarch has been a staunch supporter of Philippine sports for many years, Lao hopes to encourage people to move between disciplines and discover their own ways to stay active.

“We want to give people the freedom to explore how they move, cross between disciplines, and hopefully discover things they might never have tried otherwise,” he said. That vision carries over to the kind of community Human State hopes to build. “As we get older, the way we move and spend our time becomes more fragmented. You train in one place, play a sport somewhere else, recover somewhere else, and the people you meet through those things rarely become part of the same world. With Human State, we want to bring those parts of life closer together and create a place where they can naturally cross over.”

Some things cannot be fabricated and for the enterprising young Lao, he relishes being able to see it slowly come to fruition. “We don’t want to manufacture a sense of community. Our role is to create the right environment for it to form naturally, then let the people who come through Human State shape what that community becomes,” he said. “Hopefully, over time, it becomes a place people want to return for reasons beyond what first brought them in.”

The Human State Club is set to open its doors at the fifth floor of Greenhills Mall in the last quarter of 2026. For updates and inquiries, check out @humanstateclub on Instagram.