"For me, running was never a lofty dream or a conscious display of talent; it was the survival instinct of walking the long mountain roads every day in my childhood, the only thing a farmer's daughter like me could grasp that might change her fate."

— Wang Junxia

1998 In [year], He Jie was born into an ordinary rural family in the northern Ningxia Plain. At that time he was just a kid who loved to run wild along the Yellow River in Ningxia: on the way home from school he would sprint to the next utility pole to catch up with the figure ahead, and at school sports meets he would fight to prove himself.

Regarding running, they already showed promise at the elementary school sports meet, winning800 Rice and1500 meter race. The athlete later joined the professional team; during one...5000 In the meter race, his shoe was stepped on and came off in the second lap, yet he ran the remaining ten laps barefoot and still went on to win the silver medal. After the race he could only be carried off the track by his coach.

Running has never been a burden to me; it's more like an instinct. Even when I'm at my worst, I can grit my teeth and finish, but I would never stop. Now that I think about it, I seem to have had this trait since I was a child.

But He Jie didn't run along a predesigned path to success. He couldn't have known then that those untimed runs by the Yellow River would eventually become the starting point of his professional career. Liking to run and becoming a professional athlete are two different things.

2014 year,15 He Jie, carrying his family's concern and his hopes for the future, joined the professional team and began to undergo systematic training.For many young athletes, this seems to mean that their lives have finally come together: they have a coach, training facilities, and a structured program, and they even get opportunities to represent their hometowns—or even their country—in competitions.

 

But after joining the professional team, He Jie did not quickly become a key player.On my first day with the team, I was completely destroyed by my senior teammate during training.2016 until2017 During that period his results hit a bottleneck. He went to Shandong to train as a sparring partner, with his main task being to follow the higher-level athletes through their training. Others were the team's focus; he spent most of his time following them, working hard not to fall behind.

He Jie initially specialized in track middle- and long-distance running, but his raw top speed was not an advantage.After returning to Ningxia, the coach reassessed his physical characteristics: he was tough, had relatively strong aerobic capacity, and was better suited to longer distances. So he gradually transitioned from track events to the marathon.

In hindsight, we can easily see it as the natural choice.But for He Jie at the time, this meant that the training methods and self-image he had built up over many years had to be overturned and rebuilt. And he had to, once again, choose to keep running forward without having any answers.

He Jie also called this period "the seven misaligned years."Failure at least meant the direction was correct, only that the goal hadn't been reached yet; misalignment meant running from the start on a road that didn't suit him.

For a professional athlete, running is long since more than a hobby. It is the most familiar daily order of life, and part of results, opportunities, and even identity.

When injury repeatedly interrupts training, when effort fails to yield the expected results, a harder question emerges:If one day I can no longer run, what else can I do?

Like most runners, He Jie suffered long-term injury troubles. For a time he lacked medical and rehab support; for a period, to relieve the pain he had to give himself acupuncture.

He also experienced ordinary life after leaving the track—working in the fields, laboring on construction sites, and working as a waiter. For us now, it's hard to connect these with the later "206" He Jie.

He described himself at that time in his book like this:"A child from the ridges between fields; a youth in the professional team frustrated by injury with an unclear identity; and a young man who nearly gave up between reality and dreams."

Years of professional training seemed not to have taken him where he had imagined. Continuing offered no clear answers; turning away would mean saying goodbye to his past self. This led him at one point to consider retiring and refocusing on university life.

Until he learned he had the opportunity to join the national marathon training camp and train with higher-level athletes, he decided to try once more.

In retrospect, that of course became an important turning point in He Jie's career.But while he was in it, no one knew that ahead awaited a national record and an Asian Games title. At that time all he could be sure of was merelyfinishing one training session, taking one more step,and first doing well the parts in front of him that he could control.

2018 That year, He Jie ran his first marathon on the Jilin Marathon course. The result was2 hours28 minutes.

2019 That year, he ran to2 hours18 minutes35 seconds;2020 The following year he continued to improve, then joined the national team's training camp. In the national team, he still began as a training partner, training alongside more experienced athletes.

2021 At that year's Xuzhou Marathon, he ran2 hours12 minutes, and that same year he finished fourth at the National Games.

2023 Before that year's Wuxi Marathon, He Jie was not the most prominent name in Chinese marathon running. He had long served as a training partner, competed in many races, but rarely won.

So, when2 hours07 minutes30 seconds appeared, many people described it as“bursting onto the scene”, because people couldn't see the difficult journey behind the numbers.

“Eight years of sweat, one overnight breakthrough”。To the public, the dawn seemed to happen overnight, but for He Jie, before that he'd been running in the dark for a long time.

Records and titles made He Jie more widely known, and for the first time his running was truly exposed to the spotlight.

The setback at the Paris Olympics, the changes after becoming a public figure, and2024 the [year] Beijing Half Marathon controversy. These events aren't far in the past; some assessments haven't yet fully settled with time.

Compared with the earlier He Jie who only needed to bury his head in training and chase the teammates ahead, after becoming famous he began to face a more complex race — how to live with outside expectations.

He Jie later admitted that after repeatedly breaking national records and winning the Asian Games title, the sudden applause, honors and attention once made him swell with pride. The better the results, the easier it is to believe that everything you're doing is right; and when defeats and controversies arrive in succession, the confidence built on past results can also be shaken.

When running is no longer just his own business, every race draws outside attention and discussion: some expect him to keep breaking records, some judge his form by a single race, and some reassess everything that came before because of one loss.Can running still be as simple as it was in childhood?

Formerly, He Jie needed to constantly prove himself outwardly, drawing strength from results, placings and recognition; after experiencing peaks and setbacks, he began to learn to look inward for stability.

From constantly proving "I can" to figuring out "who I am".

06

Running has saved me countless times.

At different stages, running caught different versions of He Jie.

As a child, it gave a boy by the Yellow River his first joy and sense of achievement; after joining the professional team, it kept a young man who had long trailed others with a direction to chase; when injuries and confusion appeared, it became a way to rebuild the order of his life; when records and applause arrived, running forced him to learn how to face expectation, defeat and doubt.

Finishing a marathon doesn't make a person stop feeling lost. So we can only start again and again. When you don't know where to go next, take the next step; when life becomes chaotic, use steady breaths and strides to pull yourself back bit by bit.

He Jie's story doesn't record a standard answer but a living example: He Jie didn't try to become a second version of someone else; he was simply running hard on the path to becoming "He Jie," and in the end "became his own mountain."

And each of us runners also has a unique path of our own that cannot be copied.