Mother of three and running enthusiast Nicole De La Cruz wanted to use sports to empower her fellow moms. Women’s Run PH is the embodiment of this advocacy.
Nicole De La Cruz has been part of the Philippine running scene for several years now, way before the current running boom even began to take root. As the better half of Rio De La Cruz of Runrio fame, she has had a courtside seat to running’s peaks and valleys.
“We’ve been organizing events since 2007,” she said. “Being a mom, I already have a hard time with coping with so many things, but running helps me in so many ways.”
And while she was happy that more and more Filipinos were getting into running, there was one bit of data that struck her: seven in ten runners were males.
“I told myself, I’ll create an event for women, for the moms. I saw the data that 70 percent of the runners are male runners and 30 percent are women. So for me, my goal is to increase the women participation in running.”
As a champion of women’s empowerment, Nicole was determined to figure out why there was this disparity. She did her research and discovered a myriad of reasons.
“They don’t have self-confidence; they feel like there’s no safe space for them to run. And then each of those areas that they think that needs to be improved, I made sure that I have a solution for that.
“So I created free training runs for them. I created a platform for women to connect and have a safe space for them. And also, I made partnerships with run clubs and other communities, so that we can have an awareness in helping women to have a safe space in running.”
Nicole’s desire to empower her fellow moms led to the creation of Women’s Run PH, the largest running event in the Philippines exclusively for women. First launched in 2023, just as the pandemic-induced lockdown was virtually gone, Women’s Run PH has grown exponentially.
Its third edition, called the Lactacyd Women’s Run PH, is scheduled to happen on October 19 across the sprawling UP Diliman campus. So far, it has attracted over 10,000 participants, a phenomenal figure considering the demographic limitations and where they were two years ago.
“It’s the fastest-growing event, actually,” Nicole said during the event’s formal launch on Thursday in Taguig. “For our first-ever event, we started in 2023 with 1,700-plus women joining the event. And each year, we decided to make this event grow. We worked so hard. Last year, we were able to reach 6,000 women joining our event.
“And now, I’m very proud to say that Lactacyd Women’s Run PH is the biggest women’s running event here in the country, with 10,610 women joining this event. And we’re still counting. So, we set the record for this year and also for Philippines to reach 10,000.
“Usually, in an event, you get 10,000 or 5,000. This is already a combination of men and women. But in this event, we are able to get that 10,600-plus women.”
The date of the run, October 19, is no coincidence.
“We chose October because we’re celebrating a lot of things for this,” Nicole explains. “We’re celebrating women’s health, and part of these are the milestones bringing the community together to inspire action, spread awareness, and empower women to take charge of their health.
“October is a special month for us women. So, this is dedicated to honoring and advocating for women’s well-being from breast cancer awareness, growth osteoporosis, HPV awareness, mental health awareness needs, and more. And, of course, our event.”
The growth of Women’s Run PH should hardly come as a surprise, considering Nicole’s passion and resolve.
“I’m very happy how we were able to achieve this,” she said. “But in everything that I do, I think it’s very much my determination and my will to make this bigger. I’m very passionate with what I do, especially for women. That’s why I made sure that I was able to hit my target and go beyond.
“I have a lot of dreams because of Women’s Run, so many things that I want to achieve. One of which is, of course, we want to maintain, to be the biggest Women’s Run event here in the country. We want to continue and inspire lives of others. So what we’re doing now is that we’re slowly expanding.”
The expansion includes organizing similar events outside Metro Manila, including Visayas and Mindanao. Nicole is overwhelmed by the queries, but also acknowledges the logistical challenges of trying to satisfy each of them.
“What happened is that more people from different cities are messaging me to have the event in both areas. And because of Lactacyd Women’s Run PH, there are people from Iloilo, there are people from Cebu, Davao, in Laguna, who ask, ‘When are you going to bring Lactacyd Women’s Run PH here?’ So those are the most questions that we have.
“So what I really want to do now is to, maybe we can’t really bring in each city’s Women’s Run PH, but instead, we can have training runs in different places. That way, it’s small scale, it’s free, there’s no charge, we get to help women move and inspire more women to keep on moving.”
One encouraging statistic about this latest batch of Women’s Run PH runners is that many are trying out running for the first time.
“We were able to get 40% of runners that are beginners,” Nicole said. “So, it only shows that we are able to motivate and inspire new runners to join the event and also to experience the joy of completing the run. I’m very much happy with our partnership (with Lactacyd). We were able to help each other to reach our goal.”
True to her nature of aiming high and overachieving, Nicole De la Cruz says she wants to make the Lactacyd Women’s Run PH as big as it can get.
“We get to increase more women participation here in the Philippines, and hopefully, we can expand internationally. Hopefully, how I wish. But that’s just one of my dreams. Libre naman mangarap, diba?
“Sure. Let’s dream big.”
Banner images from Sid Ventura