race shifted shape. I thanked him quickly and began descending the steps as fast as I could, legs burning, unsure if I would catch her.
I did, somewhere before the wall ended and the course returned to the roads. And when I crossed the finish line, what I felt wasn’ t triumph so much as disbelief. Running had always existed quietly in my life, something personal and contained. Yet somehow, it had carried me into a space I hadn’ t known I was capable of reaching.
FINDING MY TRIBE There was a small running shop in Suzhou that I began visiting, owned by a man who spoke enough English for us to understand each other. At the time, most race registrations were only available on Chinese websites, impossible for me to navigate. He would enter on my behalf through his local club account, sometimes signing me up for distances I wasn’ t sure I could handle. He also advised me on equipment – what shoes to trust on technical terrain, when I would need poles, what to expect from distances I had never run before. Without him, many of those early races would have remained inaccessible, existing just beyond reach.
Not long afterwards, a Chinese friend introduced me to a woman with the English name Grace, who trained for trail races. She spoke very little English, and my Mandarin was limited, but she agreed to take me with her on one of her training days.
We met early and took a long train out of the city, eventually arriving at a small mountain. Even there, the trails were shared spaces. Hikers, families and tourists moved along the same narrow paths, and running required constant awareness – slowing, stepping aside, adjusting. It was different from the solitude I had known elsewhere.
The trail was steep and technical, winding sharply upward. She carried poles. I didn’ t. She handed me a pair and watched as I tried to use them, awkwardly stabbing the ground in front of me. She shook her head gently.“ No,” she said, smiling. She demonstrated the technique, showing me how to plant them behind me, how to use them to support upward movement rather than disrupt it.
We ran up the hill. At the top, instead of continuing forward, she turned around and ran down again. Then up. Then down. She repeated the same section, over and over and over. There was no variation. Just repetition. Focus. Discipline.
I remember being struck not only by her strength, but by her patience. She didn’ t explain her training philosophy. She showed it. And in doing so, she showed me what it meant to prepare for something beyond comfort.
At races, I began noticing the same small group of women appearing in the results again and again. Their names surfaced consistently across distances that still felt unimaginable to me – 50km, 100km, sometimes more. They weren’ t numerous, but their presence was consistent, and over time, they began to reshape my understanding of what was possible.
From left: Heading up China’ s southern great wall at Linhai on the 80km Tsaigu Trail; Mari running through the Tianmu mountains near Hangzhou during lockdown; a trail event in Hangzhou, considered one of China’ s most beautiful cities.
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE | 27