Twenty Runs, Six Countries: A Year of Running the AI Finance Circuit

Kilometer three in Kuala Lumpur, and the humidity hit like a wall. The sun had been up for twenty minutes. Already the air had crossed 30 degrees, and the jungle canopy along the trail offered shade but zero relief from the moisture. This was January 2025, the first international run of what would become a year-long experiment in refusing to let business travel break my fitness routine.

In previous years, the equation was predictable. Heavy travel schedule, skipped workouts, meals grabbed between conference sessions. 2025’s calendar looked like more of the same, with AI and finance engagements spanning six countries across three continents. Somewhere early in the year, I set a simple rule: every city gets a run.

The final count landed at twenty. Boston to Montevideo. Las Vegas to the South China Sea. San Francisco before a morning session. Manhattan on a cold evening. Florida’s Gulf Coast with sand underfoot. Some runs were planned days in advance, routes mapped on Strava before the plane touched down. Others were born from jet lag, those 4 a.m. hotel room wake-ups where lacing up and finding the city on foot was the only thing that made sense.

Singapore’s Marina Bay at dawn on a humid Tuesday delivered a 10K I’ll think about for a long time. The skyline reflecting off still water, the running path nearly empty, the air warm and heavy. Buenos Aires along the waterfront after eighteen hours of travel from the States produced a runner’s high that only deep fatigue and a fresh timezone can generate. Brunei was the unexpected entry on the list. An unplanned jog through Bandar Seri Begawan on a quiet morning. Small city, almost no other runners, mosques and water villages visible from the path.

The logistics of running on the road require surprisingly little. A pair of shoes that flatten into a carry-on. A phone with Strava loaded. The willingness to look slightly ridiculous in running gear at 5 a.m. in a city where you don’t speak the language. The payoff is immediate. Thirty to forty-five minutes of movement, and the timezone fog lifts. The day’s agenda comes into focus. The city starts to make sense as a place with its own rhythm and texture.

Running strips a city down to its fundamentals. You notice the sidewalk quality, the weight of the air, how people move in the early morning. KL’s heat teaches you humility in about eight minutes. Singapore’s infrastructure means you can run for miles without a single uneven surface. Buenos Aires gives you wide riverside sidewalks and the smell of coffee from cafes that open before the sun is fully up. Each city has a personality that only reveals itself at foot speed.

I built a page to document the full journey. Each stop has the Strava data (distance, pace, elevation, the route map), some local trivia about the city, and the reason I was there in the first place. It turned into part running log, part travel journal, part gratitude list for a year that caught me off guard. You can explore the full 2025 World Tour here.

I’m grateful for where this work in AI and finance took me in 2025. The chance to engage with finance teams and practitioners across these markets, to see firsthand how different regions are approaching the same questions about automation and financial operations, changed how I think about this space. Running through each of these cities kept me grounded while the calendar kept expanding. A small discipline with compounding returns.

2026 already has its own travel calendar taking shape. The shoes are packed. Every new city will get its run.