It started with a phone call in May 2025. My friend Angela Muhlach was on the line, telling me to join something called “Hyrox.” I had never heard the word in my life.

“I already have the passes,” she said. “All you have to do is register or find a partner. Worst case, I’ll get you one who can carry the weight of the stations. You just run.”

I had no idea what I was agreeing to. I didn’t know Hyrox was eight one-kilometer runs split between eight functional workout stations — rowing, ski-erg, sled pushes and pulls, farmer’s carries, weighted lunges, wall balls, burpee broad jumps — eight kilometers of running in total, threaded through an hour of full-body work. Angela was talking about the doubles category, where two people split the stations between them. But the running, I’d learn, doesn’t split. Both partners run the full 8K, together.

I had not worked out in ten years. My lifestyle was, by any honest measure, completely sedentary.

That weekend, Angela had me join a private orientation class at Fit Daily in Quezon City with Coach Josh Nieva — a walkthrough of all eight stations, followed by an hour of actually doing some of the work. We rowed, we ski-erged, I ran a painfully slow 500 meters, we pushed and pulled the sled, farmer’s carried kettle bells, threw wall balls, did burpee broad jumps. It was paced so gently that I walked away thinking it was pretty manageable and that I can actually do this.

I was sold. I asked my best friend, Diane Yap, to be my partner, which she immediately agreed to. Her logic was simple. If I, Denice — who hadn’t worked out in a decade and lived a fully sedentary life — was doing this, she figured she could too. We booked the flights to Japan and signed up for Hyrox Yokohama, August 2025. We had less than three months to get ready, and I had no cardio capacity to speak of.

Building From Nothing

I ran my first kilometer in June 2025. I couldn’t finish two. My personal coach, Alvaro Garcia, gave me a goal to just run 2K a day, not for time, no matter how slow or fast, just to build the habit. I paired that with strength and conditioning on weekdays and Hyrox-style classes on Saturdays at Lokal Active, under coaches Tik Rosquillo, Mark Go, Louie Chuaquico, Chris Raymund Hernandez, and Ritchie Chan.

My first class at Lokal was a wake-up call in the most literal sense — I vomited mid-workout. I realized then that my orientation with Coach Josh had been deliberately toned down, just enough to get me to say yes. It took two more weeks of struggling before I stopped feeling sick between exercises.

What surprised me was how much I started to enjoy it. I’d tried to lose weight before — more times than I can count — and every attempt ended the same way, in binge eating and more weight gained back. This time was different because weight loss wasn’t the goal. The goal was being strong enough, with enough endurance, to finish my first Hyrox. Weight loss became a side effect. I also started being mindful of what I ate, making sure the food I consumed served a function. Though I still enjoyed sweets a lot — which I like to justify as a glycogen source — I cared more about losing fat mass with the objective of running faster, about getting my protein intake right, about discovering what my body could actually do when I stopped treating it as a problem to fix.

Diane and I ran our first Hyrox simulation on June 27, 2025, just before I turned 33. My husband, Jacob, gifted me a Garmin, a Whoop, and a pair of Puma Deviate Nitro shoes for my birthday to prepare for my race. In July 2025, I ran my first 16K in ten years, a fun run I’d signed up for almost on impulse, and realized only afterward how much endurance I’d been able to build while training with the single goal of surviving Hyrox. I ran on my walking pad during lunch breaks, after dinner, after late meetings. By the end of 2025, my daily step count had gone from a daily average of 3,000–4,000 to 11,000.

On August 9, 2025, in Yokohama, Diane and I crossed the finish line together at 1:41:15. We hadn’t set a target time. We just wanted to finish in under two hours, and we did. We promised each other we’d come back and try to beat it in the future.

What Came After

I signed up for Hyrox Bangkok, March 2026, almost immediately — partly to make sure I didn’t stop working out. I ran four half marathons in the last quarter of 2025, one every month starting September, after not having run one in over a decade, and actually running them this time instead of walking most of the way, the way I had back in the day. By October, I ran my first sub-1-hour 10K. Between June and December 2025, I logged 1,064 kilometers!

In February 2026, I ran a 32K with 7-Eleven, reasoning that if I could survive that distance, I might finally be ready to try a World Major. I finished with sore legs but a managed heart rate, and that was enough to convince me to sign up for the Chicago Marathon this October, with my brother, Donway.

I kept training — threshold runs, Zone 2, intervals — chasing a better pace for Hyrox Thailand. Unfortunately, by the end of February, my knee started hurting. By March, two weeks before the race, I was diagnosed with knee synovitis.

I had to deload hard. A week before the competition, I ran one final simulation at Lokal just to test what I had left, and the coaches were direct with me about needing to rest completely in order give my knees a chance to heal before race day. I competed anyway, knee wrapped, running Hyrox mixed doubles with my partner Jacob — which meant carrying men’s weight on the stations. We finished in 1:27:23.

Falling Apart, Quietly

March, April, and May were generally hard for me. Coming from running almost every day in January and February — and using it as a means of managing stress and regulating my emotions — having to stop, and not being able to run the way I used to, caused me overwhelming anxiety. I cried because I felt all my progress had gone. In hind sight, I guess I was also scared of eventually falling into old habits and returning to my pre-Hyrox sedentary lifestyle. My heart rate would spike unpredictably, even on easy days, and it upset me a lot. I came close to binge eating again — close enough that I had to consciously talk myself down, reminding myself that the point was never punishment. It was supposed to be kindness, self-love, and self-respect.

I had spent a decade in a stagnant relationship with fitness and never once enjoyed it — until Hyrox. To build something I was proud of, only to watch it unravel because of an injury, hit me harder than I expected. The most difficult part wasn’t working around the injury. It was losing the routine that had been holding everything else together.

This past June, I’ve started again — slowly, cautiously, and backing off the moment I feel anything in my knee. Even my strength training has changed; the explosive movements that used to be routine are mostly off the table now.

Where I Am Now

I’m three months from my first World Major. I’m nervous about finishing it. Some days I’m still frustrated about how the injury, and me not knowing the importance of rest sooner, cost me the progress I’d built. It really feels like I’m back at zero.

But when I look at the full year — from a phone call I almost didn’t take seriously, to vomiting through my first real class, to finishing Yokohama, to running through pain in Bangkok, to whatever Chicago turns out to be — I know I’ve changed. Not just physically. I run my life with more balance now. I enjoy my work. I enjoy my family. I enjoy my friends. I’ve learned what it means to keep going through discomfort, and just as importantly, what it means to have patience with myself when I can’t.

I might sign up for another Hyrox soon — not for the patch, but because it’s still the best reason I’ve found to keep training, keep showing up, and keep finding out what I’m capable of.