August 2020, Chongli.
Night wind sweeps across the 168-kilometre course,
and on the trail I meet a runner named Shi Shengli.
He has run many races and won many of them,
but that night, he did not finish.
When he dropped out, the sky had not yet begun to lighten.
I did not capture his finish-line moment,
but I captured the truest face of trail running:
headlamps stringing a river of light across the mountains.
It was on that night, too,
that I first heard a name — Meng Guangfu.
He was still running in the dark, running toward dawn.
I often think back to that night.
Some runners lose to the course, yet carry the night in their hearts.
That, perhaps, is the charm of night racing.
“Withdrawal is not the end of a story — it is the beginning of another.”