What are people running when marathons are back?

Running used to be a "torture" for many people, it was boring and tiring. Either affected by "body anxiety" or in pursuit of results, many people reluctantly take heavy steps and run.

Recently, running has become popular again on Xiaohongshu, and people have discovered some new charms of this quaint sport. Some people run to explore cities around the world, leaving vivid memories of the city in the way of "city run", some people unite and make friends in running clubs, and some people regard daily running training as a metronome to regulate their lifestyle.

The runner's steps become lighter.

The switch for a new life

There is nothing in the whole body that does not hurt.

On January 7, 2024, on the track of the Xiamen Marathon, severe pain penetrated Su Zijin's body. He was familiar with the pain. As a new marathon runner, since I started running a marathon in 2022, my muscles have been sore every time I run to the end. It hurt so much that he couldn't even lift his legs, but he always insisted, and he had to move to the finish line.

The Xiamen Marathon is the third full marathon in which Su Zijin participated. Xiamen's coastal runway has a lot of uphill and downhill slopes, which is physically demanding, and the thigh muscles start to throb earlier than usual. Originally, Su Zijin also wanted to hit his personal best in this competition, but in the end he could only finish the race tiredly. Crossing the finish line, he was in a somewhat low mood.

Figure | Su Zijin at the Xiamen Marathon

On the Internet, Su Zijin has a more well-known name, called "Tissue Old Tear". His bio on social media reads "Editor-in-Chief of Runaway Comics". For many post-80s and 90s, the name of the rampage comics and the old tearing of tissues is particularly loud, even if they haven't seen the specific content, most people who are online have seen the rampage comic series. In 2018, Runaway Comics announced that it would stop changing. Su Zijin and his team members began to explore other directions in content creation, making videos and also doing game design.

After starting to run, Su Zijin recorded the experience of participating in the marathon and made a video and posted it on social platforms. In Xiaohongshu, he became a "running blogger" and was often recognized by fans in the marathon.

For Su Zijin, running is the switch to start a new life. At first, I chose to run, which stemmed from Su Zijin's desire for a healthy life in middle age. Screenwriting requires a long time at the desk, and often has to stay up late. After the age of 30, he began to feel a decline in his body functions, and the discomfort of his cervical spine became frequent, and he often felt pressure on the back of his neck and back. I stayed up all night on a shooting trip, and it took several days of exhaustion to recover. When I usually have a screenwriting meeting and write a manuscript when inspiration runs out, my colleagues will order a table of junk food together to boost their mood. By the end of the year, Su Zijin found out that he had fatty liver.

Around 2020, he realized that he should develop a long-term exercise habit to change his sub-health state. He tried to run laps around the playground every night, but soon gave up because of boredom. A puzzle is buried deep in my heart, why are so many people in the world who love running so much, and can even be willing to be willing to run a marathon like a torture?

In 2022, he communicated with a runner friend who regularly participates in marathons, and he was told that a person who has no knowledge of running only needs 10 weeks of training to participate in a half marathon. Su Zijin didn't believe it, but looking at the class schedule sent by his friend, in order to change his health and answer the doubts in his heart, he decided to give it a try.

The training has progressed beyond his imagination. For the first two weeks, he ran 3 kilometers a day, and by the third week, he was able to run 5 kilometers at a time. From the second half of the first month of training, he broke through every week, running a distance he had never run before.

Running can continue to bring people a sense of accomplishment in achieving their goals in a short period of time, and hard work can be rewarded, such a sense of certainty is rare in Su Zijin's life.

The achievements of the work are difficult to quantify. After two or three years of work, Su Zijin often falls into confusion, often wondering whether he has made progress and whether what he has done will work. Especially around 2018, his career encountered a sudden decline. Over the years, Su Zijin once planned to make another Internet account one day to reach the height he once had, and it was inevitable that he would often be anxious in the process.

Some long-distance runners are accustomed to breaking down the long journey into small sections of goals during the run, so as to alleviate the mental fatigue caused by the long journey. Su Zijin said that running has given him further confirmation of the simple and easy-to-understand truth of "dismantling goals".

In 2023, after running for a year, when he looks back on the past days, he finds that in a life of coexistence with uncertainty, the frequency and degree of anxiety have decreased, and the whole person has become calmer. In the past, he often wondered if people would live in vain if they didn't have good works. Over the past few years, he has become more and more convinced that he can always find new meanings in the journey of life. He lived a relaxed life.

In October 2023, Su Zijin went to Shaanxi to participate in the Baoji Marathon and signed up for the half marathon. Before that, he had challenged the half-marathon several times, but he was in terrible pain in the late stages. In the Baoji race, he didn't feel particularly tired when he crossed the line at the end, and he ran a personal best.

Figure | Su Zijin on the field of the Baoji Marathon

When driving back to Xi'an, where he lives, Su Zijin reminisced about this competition in his heart, and his heart became transparent, time will really carve traces on people's forward roads, and continuous repetition can indeed bring potential changes to people.

The mentality is like walking on a spiral staircase, sometimes you figure it out, and you may go back in a few days. To stabilize a good mental state, you need to remind yourself from time to time and gradually form a habit. It's the same as running training. When she first started running, Su Zijin spent a lot of time adjusting her running form, heart rate, and cadence until she formed muscle memory.

Nowadays, running and adjusting his psychological state have become two parallel tracks in Su Zijin's life, complementing each other. He thinks about the same in real life when he runs, and when he has some reflection at work, he reminds himself that he should have similar attention when running.

In the video updated by Xiaohongshu, Su Zijin revealed his pain, internal friction, thinking and growth in the process of practice. Su Zijin knows that he is not a naturally optimistic person, nor is he born good at running, and his body and mind need to be strong in acquired practice. Many people with a similar personality to him have summoned the courage to take the first step because of his sharing. A 36-year-old man his age left a comment saying that after watching Su Zijin's video, he also started training to run a marathon. According to the man's account, he weighed 50 pounds heavier than Su Zijin, and he was also "in pain" like Su Zijin when he ran a marathon for the first time. But like Su Zijin, he has also fallen in love with running, and began to record his running routine on Xiaohongshu, saying that running is "really happy".

Figure | Su Zijin used stick figures to depict the running feeling in the video

When deciding to participate in the Xiamen Marathon, Su Zijin originally hoped that his performance could go further, but he did not expect to encounter a bottleneck and barely finish the race. He was once again caught up in a battle between left and right, on the one hand, he persuaded himself to look far ahead, as a novice runner, he still had a long way to go, and on the other hand, he was unwilling to let himself not perform well.

In the midst of depression, he slowly walked towards the airport with his luggage on his back. In the past, every time he ran a marathon, his body would ache for five days, and he would walk crookedly. This time, he found that he could still carry his luggage, and a faint feeling was brewing in his heart.

When the plane arrived in Xi'an and walked on the covered bridge where he got off the plane, he found that although his body was in pain, his walking posture could maintain normal. The previous idea was confirmed - it seems that although the results did not improve this time, the strength of the body has increased a little. After confirming this, his heart settled down a lot.

Travel, while running

On the morning run, Koichi met seven or eight wild dogs.

This is in the countryside of the city of Urubamba, Peru. Unfamiliar with life, she panicked. It's dangerous to go forward, and you're afraid of being chased by dogs when you run backwards, so Cole runs marathons all year round, but if this group of wild dogs chases and attacks her, she obviously can't run as an endurance runner.

In desperation, Koichi slowly leaned down, picked up a few stones and threw them into the distance. Taking advantage of the dog's attention, she turned around and ran away quickly.

Koichi loves to travel. Later, she fell in love with marathons, and every time she traveled to a city, she would plan a route to run a section in the city, and if she had the opportunity, she would participate in the marathon in that city. So far, she has traveled in more than 70 cities.

She recorded these "marathon travel" experiences on her Xiaohongshu account, which attracted the attention of nearly 420,000 fans. Many people learn from her to start a trip in the form of a marathon, which leads to trends.

Running travel has long been a common practice among runners. In December 2020, Couchi went to Peru to visit the Amazon rainforest and went for a run. In Peruvian cities, she saw many wild dogs along the way, and the exhaust fumes of cars were pungent. Running all the way into the village, she saw dilapidated village houses on both sides of the road, and the sound of chickens crowing and villagers waking up early in the yard.

When running, the five senses seem to become sharper. Running to the countryside, the air she inhaled became moist and fresh, the grass on both sides was verdant, she smelled the fragrance of grass, not far away there was a big river flowing down from a huge waterfall, and the sound of "bang-la-la-la" water continued in her ears, and she did not feel irritable, but felt calm.

Figure | The big river that Koichi saw during his morning jog in Peru

If it weren't for running, as a tourist, she wouldn't have had such a "local" experience. At the time, she was preparing for a marathon, a city in Peru that is located in the highlands, and many professional athletes regularly train in these areas, where they return to the lower altitude after adapting to the low oxygen environment at high altitudes, where oxygen supply increases and muscle strength is strengthened. Therefore, Cole thought of taking advantage of this opportunity to have a "special training" on the plateau by himself. When she runs, her lips are numb and her fingers are purple, and she enjoys it.

Running to check in the world has become a habitual way of life. Compared with looking at the scenic spots, the scenery found while running, and the feelings recorded by using the five senses are rich and three-dimensional, and often leave a deeper memory.

Before starting running a marathon, Koi traveled almost every month. In 2018, a colleague who often runs half marathons recommended her to try the marathon, and as soon as she ate "Amway", she signed up for a marathon to be held at her destination when she was planning to travel.

After six months of training with his coach, Koi took part in his first half marathon, but was injured and moved to the finish line. After returning from that trip, she couldn't get enough of it, and signed up for a full marathon to be held in another city half a year later. After another 6 months of training, she ran a full marathon for the first time, and her results reached the entry threshold for participating in the Boston Marathon, which is one of the six marathons with the highest gold content in the world.

A small ambition grew from this - she was determined to participate in the "six marathons", thinking that it would not only allow her to travel the world, but also take the race as a branch of her life, and the process of achieving her goals could inject momentum into her life.

It took more than a year for Koyi to run the world's six marathons. She values the results of these efforts, and now, she also puts the label of "Marathon Grand Slam Six-Star Runner" in the introduction on the homepage of her Xiaohongshu. Later, she decided to brush the six major events for the second time, and she also marked the words "two brushes" after this title.

Figure | Koyi runs while traveling in Shangri-La

Netizens who follow her on Xiaohongshu are inspired by her, and often share their running routes, feelings, or ask for equipment recommendations under the posts. A netizen left a message saying that she insisted on going out for a run at minus 18 degrees, and Koichi admired her perseverance and reminded her not to get frostbite.

During the marathon trip around the world, Koichi felt the collision of cultures. The organizers of the event in Tokyo were very strict, and the materials were well prepared and the instructions were long. People on both sides of the road stopped silently or whispered politely. In Boston, the crowd was enthusiastic, hugging and kissing the runners, running through a screaming tunnel, and many students clapping and screaming to cheer on the runners. In Germany, Koichi felt that the players were more competitive, and they were all squeezing past when they overtook them.

Each time, Koichi incorporates a marathon into her travel plans. When she started running, she used to check if there was an upcoming marathon at her destination when planning her trip. During her vacation in July 2018, she planned a trip to Iceland, during which she planned a marathon in Iceland.

At that time, the event was held during the polar day, and the race was at night, with the sun still hanging high in the sky. She was the only Asian among the contestants. The locals didn't speak English, and as she walked, she felt like she had arrived on an isolated island, looking at the local runners around her, and some people were looking at her. They don't speak the same language and can't communicate. She suddenly felt that she was in an extremely strange place, but as if she was not a tourist, but a little integrated into the life of the locals.

Figure | Kloichi runs in Iceland

Two years later, Koyi sorted out the experience of traveling and competing in Iceland and updated it on Xiaohongshu. She found a photo of the time, attached it to the post, and used it to explain in detail how to sign up for the marathon. She especially reminded netizens that the format of the year, month and day on European and American websites is different, and you must read it carefully when registering.

On Xiaohongshu, runner Koichi has become a "marathon instructor" for many people. Under many posts, netizens wrote comments thanking her for sharing, and some people said that they also went to various places to participate in the competition after seeing her sharing.

Figure | A message from a netizen to Koichi

Taking marathon travel as a way of life, Koichi has made a heart-to-heart change. In the past, she was a nightlife lover and liked to hang out with friends after work and have a drink and chat. In order to prepare for the marathon, she had to spare early morning time to train. This means going to bed early and waking up early. She cut down on the frequency of her nightly gatherings and used a variety of techniques to get herself up early, and as she got into the habit, she felt like she was benefiting a lot. Koichi said that she feels that people will always reflect and be anxious at night, and get caught up in unsolved problems in life and work, while in the morning, people are more likely to focus on the things to be solved.

She explores the world more deeply.

In January 2024, Chloe went for a run in Shangri-La. Set off before sunrise, in the weather of minus 7 degrees, at an altitude of 3,400 meters, she ran in a single coat and rushed all the way from Songzanlin Temple to the top of the mountain. Along the way, she met local Tibetan elders, who curiously asked her if she would be cold and praised her for her good health. Koichi asked them for a route and wanted to extend the running route. Guided by the locals, she walked to places rarely visited by tourists, and saw the whole view of Songtsamling Monastery in the process. The sun is out. The sun illuminates the clouds, a feeling of fairy mist. She was touched by the sight in front of her.

Running and running, I met more interesting souls

When introducing her "Pick Up Running Group" activity to people on the streets, Yang Huiwen and her fellow runners often mentioned that they can search for their running group ideas and activities on "Little Red Book" and welcome people to join them.

In the fall of 2020, Yang Huiwen saw a friend share a series of photos of people in sportswear picking up trash on the street with plastic clips and garbage bags in their hands.

After learning about it, Yang Huiwen knew that this is a group called "TrashRunning", they advocate the concept of environmental protection, and runners run on the street while bending down to pick up municipal garbage. In Shanghai, the group organizes multiple pick-up and running routes every week. This piqued Yang's interest, and she also signed up for the event, choosing a route close to her home to participate.

Yang Huiwen went to the agreed meeting point on time. Along the way, everyone talked and laughed, sometimes stopping to pick up garbage, sometimes taking pictures. Maybe professional runners don't like to stop when running in the city, and they have to run in place when waiting for the traffic light. But she feels that for novices, stopping to pick up trash during a run has become a kind of rest. At the end of that first run, Yang Huiwen was a little discouraged, and the experienced runners in the team began to guide her to adjust her breathing, encourage her, and help her finish the whole race.

Figure | Members of the running group pick up trash on the streets

That day happened to be the 100th time that a member of the running group participated in the event. The running group prepared a small celebration ceremony, and the participants of the event shared the cake together. Yang Huiwen admired, for her who was still a novice at the time, 100 times seemed to be an unattainable goal, and she guessed that this runner must have a full love for running and had been running for a long time.

For Yang Huiwen, through running the group, she knows many people from different professions that she can't get in touch with in her work. Older aunts and uncles, students from nearby schools, or foreign friends sometimes join in. Acquaintances with some of these runners broadened her understanding of life.

In the running group, she met several older sisters, who usually talked about running and work together, and never felt that there was a difference in identity between them. It wasn't until they talked about bringing the child to run together one day that she realized that the healthy and slender woman in front of her was already a mother.

After learning that these runners were mothers, Yang Huiwen occasionally asked them about marriage and family issues, and how to find time between busy work and housework to develop hobbies. The women shared tips for quickly making dinner for their children so they could go for a run, while others said that their husbands were in charge of cooking. In them, Yang Huiwen saw the possibility of managing personal space after marriage that she had not known before. If she finally chooses to get married, she hopes that she can be like these mothers.

As she participated in the running group more times, she gradually became familiar with the members, and one of the running group operators invited her to come to the running group to help out and do work on design and brand activities. After agreeing, Yang Huiwen began to work for the running group in her spare time. In order to do this job well, she has insisted on participating in group running activities every week since 2022.

Although it is "generating electricity for love", Yang Huiwen is still very serious when working for the running group. She changed the overall visual style of the running group and found ways to plan various interesting activities, such as arranging photo spots in the running route, so as to attract more people to join. In the fall, they run past where the ginkgo fell, and at Christmas, the members of the running group dress up as Santa Claus and carry Santa's red bags for garbage......

Figure | Members participate in Christmas activities

These interesting activities, sometimes combined with the photos taken by the runners, are sorted out and posted on Xiaohongshu to promote the running group. Yang Huiwen feels that they are not only picking up garbage on the streets to clean up the city's garbage on a limited basis, but also to remind more residents to pay attention to environmental protection issues and gather more people with common volunteers. From time to time, new members contact them to apply to join because they see "picking up and running groups" on Xiaohongshu. In the comment area and background of the Xiaohongshu account, you can often receive information from netizens asking how to join.

When running on the streets to pick up garbage, there are often curious people asking questions, thinking that they are making money by picking up garbage and selling it. Yang Huiwen and her fellow runners always use this to introduce people to the running group: the members care about the surrounding environment while exercising, hoping to influence a group of people and then a city through one person. If someone immediately expresses interest, they will give each other the contact information of the running group and invite the other party to come to the event later.

Figure | Running group activities publicity

November 15, 2023 is the day when Yang Huiwen participated in the 100th running event. It's still the route that Yang Huiwen is familiar with, near her home. A runner brought her shrimp cakes bought at a nearby stall. A runner prepared a fairy stick for her. As he ran, a runner gave him a bouquet of flowers like magic, saying that he had bought it on the street. The runners hadn't seen each other a few times, but they were already close friends.

On this all-too-familiar route, this day was like holding Yang Huiwen's birthday party, Yang Huiwen celebrated with her good friends and was surrounded by warmth.

On the same day, the closest friend to Yang Huiwen was unable to attend the event because of work, but the other party still rushed to the running friends dinner site after the run. He came in the dust, just to have a celebratory glass of wine with Yang Huiwen, an old friend who was united by running.

When the pace accelerates, the dialogue with life begins. Like Su Zijin, Ko Yi and Yang Huiwen, more and more people are sharing their hobby of running on Xiaohongshu. In Xiaohongshu, the friendly and warm community atmosphere encourages people who love running to continuously upload their running experiences and share their running experiences based on their own experiences. People sincerely communicate and share, constantly nourishing the continuous trend of running as a way of life.

On January 7, the Xiamen Marathon kicked off, and Xiaohongshu participated in it as an exclusive content cooperation community, which is also the epitome of Xiaohongshu's "Running is a Marathon" year-round activity.

There are also many moments in life that resemble running a marathon. People are immersed in the flow and the details unfold as they run.