Some people are simply natural runners, without any training they can run times that most serious amateurs can be proud of. Abdi Abdirahman, a great American distance runner, ran a 15 min 5k the first time he entered a race as a high school student, with no training. Recently, I met a female Tibetan version of Abdi, a young nomad from Golok, a remote area of Qinghai province in China, famous for its tough warrior folk. Yishi Drolma was born and grew up a nomad, looking after the family’s 400 yaks in the remote mountains in Qinghai province. The altitude was over 4000m, enormous Tibetan mastiffs kept the wolves away and snow leopards prowled the high passes above the pastures. Her own mother passed away early and she became a mother to her 4 siblings. Life was tough, unforgiving and sometimes violent. Yishi Drolma did not speak any Chinese, only the local dialect of Tibetan, but wanted to see the world, glimpses of which she saw on television and in the magazines that came her way. When she was 13 she managed to get her hands on 300 yuan and ran away to Chengdu in Sichuan where she knew one person. She spoke no Chinese at the time. When she was 19 she ran away again, knowing that her father would never let her go. She came to Shangrila, Yunnan where she got a job as a singer of Tibetan nomad songs at a gaudy Tibetan folk performance center aimed at Chinese tourists, which also provided room and board. I saw where she lived, a cramped, draughty freezing room, which she shared with two other Tibetan girls and two puppies. At least she had her own bed; the other two girls were sharing the same tattered mattress. People from Golok are renowned for their toughness and fighting spirit, as well as for their deep Buddhist beliefs. Yishi is no exception; once, in Shangrila, she confronted a lama, who, dressed in his robes, was sitting in a bar watching the girls, drinking and smoking. Yishi tore into him, admonishing him for disrespecting Buddhism, and setting a bad example to Tibetans. In addition to singing, during the summer Yishi also takes Chinese tourists hiking, charging a pittance for her services as a guide, porter and organizer. She told me that it did not feel right to charge people for enjoying the natural world. This attitude is extremely rare now, as everyone is ruthlessly trying to cash in on the tourist boom in the area. I met Yishi through a friend when I was looking for a Tibetan teacher, and she soon asked me to take her running. Wearing my old running tights, a t-shirt several sizes too big, my running shorts and a pair of basic running shoes I got her, she simply took off, bouncing, jumping and singing as she ran. We ran 10k that first day, at a very respectable pace for 3300m altitude, and she could have kept going. Then Project Y was born。 I soon suggested to Yishi that if she trained and trained hard, she could win trail races in China and could even support herself with prize money, as she was earning very little as a singer. My local Tibetan friends, who saw us running on the roads and trails around Shangrila, took to the idea whole heartedly. Tibetans, fiercely proud people, only have one high profile athlete, a speed walker who got a medal in the Olympics in London. The thought that a nomad girl from Golok could compete and win, and in a sport which meant running through the mountains, which Tibetans love, impressed and moved them. Older Tibetans would tell her to train as hard as she could in order to show the world what their minzu, (ethnic group) was capable of and not let slip the opportunity that came her way. They thanked me ceremoniously and profusely for becoming her coach. This made me feel both very honored and more than a little embarrassed by the attention. Below is an interview with Yishi Drolma: 1. Where exactly are you from? I am from Qinghai Province, Golok Prefecture, Jigzhil County. Our pasture was close to the sacred mountain called Nyanpo Yurtse; the highest mountains around the pasture are almost 5400m high. The closest town is more than 40km away. Our pasture was very large, 7 families are using it now; our family lived between two large lakes called Upper Rak Gan Lake and Lower Rak Gan Lake. 2. When you were growing up in the mountains, what was your daily life like? What was the hardest part of living there? Most of the time was spent looking after yaks. They had to be milked twice a day. It was a huge job, as we had almost 400 yaks. In the afternoon we had to keep calves away from their mothers, to prevent them drinking all the milk. You can’t have fences in the upland grasslands. My brother and I had to run and run scaring the calves away from the cows. Another job was collecting yak manure on the pasture which was then dried and turned into fuel to burn. We had a lot of fun with my brother running around the pasture collecting, playing games as we went along. I miss those times. I did not have much free time, but I would make time for myself by forcing my older brother to do the chores my parents asked me to do. I was tough, and he was afraid of me, if he didn’t do what I told him to do I would beat him up (laughs). Once my father said that he would buy us new clothes when ours got worn out, so me and my brother got very excited and ran to the mountains were we tore up our clothes using rocks. When our father found out what we did, he refused to buy us new clothes, so we had to wear the ones we tore up for a long time. 3. Why did you leave the pasture and move to the town of Jigzhil? After my mother passed away there was too much work for my father, we were five siblings, so my father decided not to make our lives harder than they were and we went to live in a town. 4. Why did you leave Jigzhil and come to Shangrila? I wanted to study, and my father would not let me go to school, because I was the only one who could look after the house. I really like to learn and I could not learn anything in Jigzhil, so I came to Shangrila where I started to learn English at a volunteer-run training school. 5. What would your family think if they knew that you want to be an athlete, a runner? I don’t really know, I actually told my father and the only thing he said was: “Can there be a future in this running, can it give you enough to live?’’ I said: “I don’t know yet”. NOTE: this interview is from a few months ago. Things have changed, Yishi had to leave Shangrila and go home to look after her siblings. Her father, a heavy drinker and a gambler could not look after them anymore and put pressure on her to return. Yishi could not train for three months, but then took 4th place in a 50km trail race in China, the first time she competed. Unfortunately, she cannot rain now, as she looks after the household full-time, and her future as a runner is in doubt. Catwalk at 4000 metres - working as an outdoor consultant for a photoshoot Dali , Lijiang10/17/2014 I had never worked with, or even spoken with real models before. My cursory knowledge of models and their habits was based on whatever I heard of the exploits of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and the film Zoolander. I was both curious and apprehensive when I got a phone call from Toread (探路者China’s largest outdoor clothing company) inquiring if I would be willing to work as an outdoor consultant on their catalogue photo shoot in Lijiang and Dali. Toread wanted a foreigner with outdoor experience to make their models look gnarled, in control and adorned with all sorts of outdoor gear hanging in the right places. Their previous catalogues pictured well groomed, squeaky-clean catwalk models striking poses reminiscent of North Korean statues, usually holding a piece of climbing equipment upside down. Their creative director demanded that a foreigner was required for such task and somehow my name came up. Can you wear shorts to the top of Zhomolungma? (Mount Everest), admiringly asked me Wang Feng, the rockstar and the face of Toread. We were filming him at the summit of Cang Shan near Dali, I was wearing a pair of shorts and a down jacket, perfectly adequate, but considered a superhuman, yogic feat by the tourists, the Toreaders and Wang Fang’s entourage. My bare legs drew astonished stares, with comments on their nakedness mixing with those on their hairiness and, more flatteringly, their muscularity. My reputation as a superman was cemented as soon as we left the cable car and started making out way to the summit of Cang Shan. Our caravan of managers, photographers and make-up artists was piled up with boxes and bags of clothes which had to be ferried up. A few minutes later, altitude (4000m above sea level), chain smoking and life-long abhorrence of exercise did their job - everyone was hanging on to the walkway’s railings, engaged in some serious air-sucking. Bags and boxes were unceremoniously discarded. I made my way to the front of the caravan, picking up boxes and bags along the way. Tai lihai le, said, with a self-congratulatory tone, the chain smoking creative director who was leaning against the railing, face bright red. He had obviously chosen the right foreigner. Wang Fang was given a guitar and was striking pensive poses in the shrubbery, the cameras snapping away, a pile of windbreakers, fleeces and waterproofs waiting. I had nothing to do, so I decided to play with my climbing rope, coiling it in different ways to see which one the Toreaders would prefer, when a ripple of excitement tore through the female Toreaders: She just called him! It was her! Definitely her! It turned out that the actress Zhang Ziyi (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame), the current girlfriend of Wang Feng, just called the rock star. Wang Feng took the best part of the day, I did not have anything to do as Wang Feng was not required to be decorated with any of the rock and ice-climbing gear I had at my disposal. The gear was intended for the models, Russain, Mexican, Brazilian and one from a country that nobody could remember (it turned out to be Serbia), who were awaiting us in Lijiang. The models were very tall and very cold. Temperature – wise. We met them in Lijiang, they were sitting around a table in a rather dingy restaurant shivering, waiting for their dinner. Judging by what they were wearing (very fashionable, but not very insulating) none of them obviously knew, or were informed, how cold it can get in Lijiang (a city in southern China, but close to the Himalaya and at 2300m of altitude) in November. This place is amazing, brother, Bruno, the Brazilian male model, told me, but is bloody cold. I thought we were going to South China, so it would be tropical, like Hong Kong, he added. The Serbian male model, all 6 foot 4 of him, vigorously nodded in agreement. The Russian female model sneered. The evening chill of Lijiang was obviously nothing compared to the climatic ferocity of Mother Russia. I looked at her with respect. The filming was to be done at the summit of Yulongxueshan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) and several other locations near Lijiang. I knew were staying somewhere in the countryside and I expected a comfortable rustic hotel, WiFi, hot showers, and evening beers by the fireplace regaling the models with my tales of sporting adventures in China. I never got a chance – crushing my log cabin hostel fantasy, the Toreaders rented an entire house from their Yi (an ethnic minority in the mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, fierce bandits and slaveholders until as recent as 50 years ago) owners. We were sleeping two to a room (unheated) which was someone’s bedroom. I was cursing myself for not having brought my -40C mountaineering sleeping bag as the temperature in my room was only marginally above zero. The models, to my surprise and admiration, were not phased or pissed off, treating it as an adventure, but they were wearing almost everything they brought along, wrapping their heads in t-shirts for extra warmth, looking a lot like German soldiers in the Eastern Front in the middle of winter. I lent all the warm stuff I brought along and was not actually wearing to the Mexican and the Brazilian, the gigantic Serbian (who used to play football professionally) turned down my offer as did the sneering Russian. I also gave my models a lecture on altitude sickness, and soon they were swigging away at their bottled water every five minutes. The Wulong Quest is one of the largest, and the richest adventure races in the world, a 4 day all-out dash across the lush and often waterlogged Sichuan mountains, with teams of four running, cycling and kayaking their way to the first prize of 100,000 US dollars. It is by far the richest race of this kind in the world, the local government puts up an exorbitant amount of prize money, and in a true Chinese style, spares neither the pomp nor the expenses for the opening and closing ceremonies. The world’s top adventure racers come for this race, true multisport supermen and women; excellent outdoorsmen all, many are ex-pro mountain bikers and kayakers, some are former Olympians, sponsored by brands like Patagonia and Red Bull. Bizarrely, in China these elite athletes share the field with a rather different type of competitors, slap-dash Chinese teams, which are invited to make up the numbers. I walked into an unexpected adventure by agreeing to come as a last-minute replacement for one of those teams. My team (the teams consisted of three males and one female) was made up of students and a recent graduate of Chinese sports universities, one speed climber, one skier and an ex-gymnast girl. All of them were summoned to race through a network of sports guanxi. It was obvious that none of them had trained in any way for the event, but all were delighted to get a free trip to Sichuan. I was, by default, the Master and Commander of this bunch, whom I called the No. 3 State Turtle Farm Outdoor Club, or The Turtles for short. None of the Turtles had bikes, harnesses, carabineers or any other gear required for the event. We were lent ex-hire bikes by the organizers and I had to distribute whatever other gear I had amongst the Turtles. The race started with a 2k run and I grimly hooked the Girl Turtle into a pulling line attached to my waist (the weakest team members are towed by the strongest) despite her protestations. After 500m the Girl Turtle was screaming for me to slow down and the other two Turtles were way behind, breathing hard, unable to keep up. I then realized that finishing would be a miracle. On the first day we were 16th out of 20 teams and the Turtles were delighted not to be last. On day two we had a 10k kayak section though what turned out to be rather scary white water. The cheerful, somewhat chubby Skier Turtle from Harbin informed me that he could neither swim, nor kayak. He did seem to have an unshakable belief in the powers of his life vest and did not seem unduly worried. I was. The river was very quickly filled with capsized kayaks of the make-up the numbers teams, some unfortunate competitors were clinging, limpet-like, onto tree branches and rocks on the banks and the rescue boats more than had their hands full. I steered my turtles through the rapids and they were absolutely stoked not to have capsized and having been spared the indignity of being fished out. I felt a little inspired too and very proud of my Turtles. Competent they were not, but they were cheerful, brave and tough. My excitement soon wore off on the mountain bike section, were it turned out that the Girl Turtle had no up-hill capability. I had to run behind her, pushing her bike with one hand, holding my bike with the other, while she tried to pedal in the lowest gear. The problem was that the Harbin Skiing Turtle was unable to keep up and I had to propel the Girl Turtle uphill, launch her down from the top, leave my bike, sprint down, push the Skiing Turtle up, launch him, then jump on my bike and repeat the procedure on the next hill. This method was effective, if highly energy consuming, and we even managed to overtake two other Turtle teams. We missed the cut off time for the day and had to take a huge time penalty but were still in 16th place, far from being last. The Turtles were delighted but I was absolutely spent, the mountain bike section was 60 kilometers. The next day was even tougher and I knew that what we were doing was not sustainable. I summoned all my powers of diplomacy, hinting to the Girl Turtle that we should pull out. The reply was that our chengji was really good and pulling out would be silly. She did not seem to realize that our chengji was solely due to me pushing and pulling two people and three bikes for hours on end though wet Sichuan shrubbery. The German race director had said in the race briefing that “ze downhill mountain bike section eez very technical!” and that’s where my Great Turtle Adventure came to the end. By the time we were on the mountain bike section the Girl Turtle was exhausted, mumbling incoherently that she could not feel her arms. I ordered the Turtles into a defensive formation around the quickly fading Girl Turtle, who, a few minutes later, on a steep downhill, hit a rock, was launched from her seat and landed face first in the mud with a thud. She was lying unconscious in the mud, convulsing, face covered in blood, and was on the point of biting off her tongue. I managed to pry her jaws open, and free her tongue which I then had to prevent her from swallowing. The other two Turtles stood around in shock. A bunch of peasants materialized out of nowhere, extremely excited to see a foreigner digging around in the mouth of a bloodstained Chinese girl. I demanded a mobile from one of the peasants and ordered the Skiing Turtle to call the race organizers and get an ambulance in, while the Climbing Turtle was dispatched to cycle to the next checkpoint, let the phone plan failed, as there was a great deal of confusion as to where exactly we were and whom we could call. A peasant was dispatched to the nearest house to bring clothes to wrap up the girl, who, to my infinite relief, soon regained consciousness and asked what happened. Twenty minutes later an ambulance made its way down the muddy track and the Turtle was taken to the nearest hospital. She had several stitches to her lips and mouth, but did not lose any teeth. When she came back to the athletes hotel the following day, face grotesquely swollen, she was more concerned about the fate of her baseball hat that she thought she lost. I still keep in touch with my former teammates on Weixin, and a skiing reunion of the No 3 Turtle Farm Outdoor Club team is being discussed at the moment. Wow, dude, what is this stuff? A Californian pro adventure racer and life-style coach Paul Romero asked me. Paul looked like he just walked off a front page of a surfing magazine and into a dining hall of a fourth-tier city hotel in Shandong. A fat topless Chinese guy, busy piling prawns onto his plate, stared with great interest at this superb human specimen. Its dogmeat, Paul. I replied. And this is starfish. Yishan 100km Trail Challenge had the best prize money on offer of all trail races in China: 40,000 yuan in cash, tax free, to the winner, with decent chunks of money available down to the 15th or so place. Tucked away in the middle of horrendously polluted interior of Shandong, the Yishan Scenic Area must rank alongside Moldova or Chad on the list of places to visit. The idea behind staging a race of this caliber in such an unlikely and hard to reach location was lure foreigners to its natural beauty and splendor. The money attracted the top road runners in China, 2:15, 2:20, 2:17…. Wei Jun, the organizer, was giving me the marathon times of the runners who turned up. Look, ta hen lihai! (he is gnarley!) He would say excitedly pointing at yet another skinny and hungry-looking gaoshou (expert or someone very good at something) in a cheap tracksuit. Amateur runners were milling excitedly in the hotel lobby, taking photos and making a great deal of noise. Gaoshous ignored them with a mixture of contempt and aloofness a professional assassin might show towards a paintball enthusiast; they had every right to, those guys could not run half a lap a the gaoshou’s marathon pace. The foreign runners were a motley collection of foreigners that knew the organizers and owned a pair of running shoes, triathletes, adventure racers and elite runners. Paul Romero and his glamorous athletic girlfriend looked almost unnaturally healthy and tanned. They were accompanied by a Belgian triathlete who was a bit bewildered by the culture shock. There was another triathlete, an extremely muscled Slovakian with male model looks. Then there was Puzi, a diminutive, middle-aged Malaysian veteran of every adventure race under the sun, who was complaining how hard it was in Malaysia to get a good girl for an adventure racing team since the last one he found died of food poisoning in China after a race. Clement Dumont, an elite French ultra marathoner from Hong Kong was cornered by a strange Chinese runner, a teacher of English at university, who bombarded him with bizarre questions, one of which later became one of mine and Rudy’s catch phrases: are you afraid of snake in grass in rural area? The special foreigner table had a selection of the best foreigner-food available in the town – jam, white bread and lots of cold burgers from a KFC. The manager hovered like an attack drone around the table, swooping on the Chinese who tried to sit down. After we showed insufficient enthusiasm for yesterday’s chicken burghers and jam, the manager visibly panicked, and I had to reassure him that his selection was spot on, but the foreigners simply wanted to try local specialties. Rudy was bouncing around, he was in a fantastic form and wanted both the glory and the cash. I was skeptical of his race hydration plan (the amount of water he planned to carry and how much salts he wanted to take) and the speed that planned to stick to on the flats, but he dismissed me as too conservative, negative and slow. The road pros had obviously never run a trail ultra race before, and neither did they have the gear required. At the start line some turned up with schoolboy backpacks (one had a Mickey Mouse picture on it) with a bottle of water inside. The goashous took off at the marathon speed to which they are programmed. We bombed it down the dirt road and then straight into a farmer’s field (who screamed in futile fury) never dropping below a 5:30 mile pace. After three miles of flying through yet more fields (and angry peasants), up hills and through barely visible trails in thick shrubbery I decided that this was a silly way to start a 100k race. It was also very hot. I slowed down and soon was overtaken by a swarm of weekend runners riding a short-lived wave of excitement and enthusiasm, Puzi flew buy. The heat was oppressive and I was almost soon out of water, and took a massive dose of salts at a water point, fearing cramps. The weekend runners were now jogging or trudging, looking miserable, knowing that they still had more than 80 km to go and that they were spent. I was soon joined by a Taiwanese runner and the Chinese ultra marathon female superstar, Dong Li. We cruised at the same pace, chatting about the course and complaining about the heat, wondering how long would the gaoshous last at the pace they took off at. The answer soon revealed itself. An elite Hong Kong runner, a fireman, whom I had seen many times before, but could never remember his name, was in sight, stumbling up a hill. I went past him, trying to look as comfortable as possible. I made a point to turn around to have a look at his face when tiny Dong Li went past him. It was a look of a broken man, and he indeed dropped out soon afterwards. After 40k we found three gaoshous sitting down on the trail, deadly pale and out of water. They had enough courtesy to clap and jiayou (Chinese version of come on, or go for it, literally means add fuel) us. 10k later an elite guy was hugging a pine tree, absolutely spent. Then, suddenly I saw a white t-shirt, and that was Rudy. He was walking. I could see from the back that this was what we called a walk of shame, a DNF (did not finish). I am done, was all that he said. He was not happy, the next checkpoint was 10km away where a meat vagon (a van where the dropped out runners were collected before being driven back to the hotel) awaited. The thought of a 10km walk of shame, being overtaken by gleeful runners basking in their tactical sagacity, made me shudder. I felt extremely sorry for Rudy but all I could do for him was a pat on the back. Dong Li, the Taiwanese guy and me were refilling at a water point at the 70km mark, when Dong Li suddenly scrambled and took off. I never saw her again until the finish line, it was an impressive demonstration of athletic ability and willpower. The Taiwanese shrugged: ta hen lihai (she is really gnarley) he nonchalantly added. We took off. A few km later the Taiwanese guy said that he was cramping up, and told me to go for it. There was nobody for the next 10km and I put in my headphones and to take my mind off the pain and discomfort. On a bend I almost fell over a skinny guy in tiny track shirts, sprawled in the dust, his schoolboy rucksack thrown on the ground, the lad ran himself into the ground. I was trying to speed up, there was a incredibly steep climb over boulders though a dense forest ahead, the organizers told us that there was no trail. I had to do it while it was still light. I scrambled over the last boulders and fallen trees just as the sun set, feeling sorry for the people who had to do it in the dark. I put on my headlamp and bombed it downhill on the country road. I could see two headlights ahead, bobbing up and down. They suddenly stopped bobbing and started to jump around in all directions. The runners were obviously lost and were looking for route markers. Two young gaoshous appeared in the light of my headlamp: no markings here, big brother, one of them said, with desperation. I remembered an unmarked turnoff I had passed a minute earlier and told them to follow me. My hunch was right, the turnoff was correct, but someone had stolen all the markings. The young guys stayed with me, relying on my route finding rather than risking getting lost. We chatted amicably. I heard a noise behind and soon two headlamps appeared, two more gaoshous caught up and joined our pack. We had 10k to go and there were five of us now, being overtaken by one runner reduced your prize money by at least 1000 yuan (100 pounds). We stopped chatting and the desperate battle began. Seven minute miles feel hard after 90k, and soon two of gaoshous faded, falling back, but still fighting it out between each other. I was fading too, desperately trying to hang on, hoping to stay with the front two and then try to take at least one in a sprint finish, but with 3k to go they pulled away and I was left alone in the dark. It also started to rain. I was tenth in that race, taking 6000RMB(1000 US)in prize money. Dong Li was 6th overall and the first girl by more than 2 hours. The Taiwanese runner finished forty minutes behind me. |