When her relationship ended last year, Ria Xi did what many heartbroken twenty-somethings do: she went for a run.
“For my 25th birthday, I decided to run every day for 30 days. It was the only thing I could hold onto. The only thing that reminded me I had control.”
Soon after her 30-day streak, running snowballed into an obsession, and she began chasing world records after quitting her Silicon Valley tech job.
Within a year, Beijing-born Xi had set a world first in Egypt, completing a 567km (352-mile) run on the Sinai Trail on a desert route no one had run on before.
“It was a very transformative experience, from being heartbroken and not feeling very accomplished to doing something a lot of people thought was impossible.”
The attempt became the foundation of a bigger project: to run 20,000km across Asia and Europe in 2026, starting in Russia and ending in Portugal.
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