Exploration doesn’t always mean climbing mountains; it can be about delving into ordinary alleys and re‑seeing the city beneath your feet.

Unlike the extended, head‑to‑head racing of standard road events,the Salomon Gravel No‑Fixed‑Route Challenge sets up a timed urban exploration experiment for runners,with one start/finish, 120 minutes, and 16 scoring checkpoints—runners no longer follow a set course but must plan their routes and weave through streets using their own judgment.

In the fast pace of city life we may have grown accustomed to day‑to‑day commuting, but in this120 minutes, the Salomon Gravel Challenge strips the city of its routine character and turns its markets and alleys into a large open arena.

You might run past a corner park, a sidewalk florist or teahouse, or a favorite hotpot restaurant; you might stumble upon a hidden corner just beyond a traffic light. Whatever routes you choose, it’s a city exploration that’s uniquely yours.

When“no fixed route” meets different cities, it creates the most delightful chemistry.

In Chengdu, the steamy spice of hotpot restaurants complements the relaxed ease of old teahouses; runners set out from park cafés, thread through bustling districts and greenways, and encounter Chengdu’s laid‑back, everyday street life.

Shanghai offers a completely different urban landscape. Beneath modern neon, the cowbell—symbolizing the spirit of adventure—rings through the bustling Xintiandi; century‑old neighborhoods, plane‑tree lined streets and the Bund riverside together stitch a moving feast.

Running over smooth, wide asphalt roads, uneven cobblestone paths and polished marble floors, your feet alternate across the city's different surfaces, touching layers of past and present.

So labeling it merely as a road race may be too simple; the Gravel Challenge is more like a city ramble completed on foot—you can turn at an alley, pause at a street corner, and in just 120 minutes read those ordinary, easily overlooked daily scenes.

So how fast do you have to run to be considered “fast”?“Fast”? Does running fast necessarily mean you’ll win?

In traditional road races, your pace very directly determines your finishing time, whilethe Salomon Gravel no-fixed-route challenge completely turns those traditional rules on their head.

With no pacers and no official route map, under Gravel’s format fast and slow are no longer opposites and are no longer defined solely by pace — a runner’s speed, calculations, decisions, luck, and even the traffic lights at intersections all play a part in this game.

Even before the starting gun— thirty minutes before, the game has already begun.

From the moment the first fixed scoring point appears on the map, runners must constantly make choices:Which points do you go to? Which do you skip? Go for high-value points first or the closest ones? How can you run to save the most time? And when the countdown nears, do you gamble on one more point or sprint back to the finish?

Of course, you don’t have to chase the clock. This year’s Gravel Chengdu stop set up six “slow” scoring points — experience pouring tea with a long‑spouted teapot in an old Chengdu teahouse, play a Sichuan mahjong stacking game in a hotpot restaurant, run relaxed and simply enjoy yourself —sometimes allowing yourself to slow down is another kind of “fast.”

Besides the individual race, this year’s Shanghai stop added a three-person team event: teammates collaborate on routes, set off together and finish together. Running and socializing merge over those 120 minutes, turning the Gravel challenge into a large in-person gathering.

Competing in the Gravel Challenge for the first time, Shen Jiasheng—together with Nianzhe Ati and Chang Miaomiao—formed the Salomon Zhushan Team and finished third in the team standings at the Shanghai stop; team captain Shen Jiasheng said after the race,unlike running alone in the mountains — where one person might be able to run faster — teamwork is more meaningful than the individual race.

Once the cowbell rings, just put one foot in front of the other; as for the result, it isn’t that important.

In this “me”-led game you can hit all six scoring points in just over 20 minutes, you can weigh pros and cons and push to the final second, or you might miss the cutoff by chasing one more point.

Some finish in a flash, some chase high scores, some go home satisfied.That’s exactly what makes the Salomon Gravel no-fixed-route challenge so interesting: it fully deconstructs the idea of a “running race.”Everyone has their own rhythm and direction; every second is full of unknowns and variables, and every decision writes its own answer.