The 27-year-old Ria Xi never expected running to become a lifelong compass. Two weeks ago, she woke up in Vladivostok, put on her running shoes, and started running west.

She has not stopped since.

Every day, she runs approximately 50 kilometers. Every morning, she wakes up in an RV parked somewhere along the route – a remote parking lot in nature if she is lucky, an urban side street if she is not. Every evening, she limps back into that same RV, eats whatever her crew puts in front of her and tries to sleep before doing it all over again.

By the time she reaches Lisbon, Portugal, she will have covered 20,000 kilometers on foot. She will have crossed 17 countries. She will have spent 14 months running the length of the ancient Silk Road.

She is the first person to attempt this.

"Only delusional until it's not," she says.

The longest way home

Ria was born in Beijing. She spent the last decade living in the United States, first in Silicon Valley working in tech, then traveling full-time in a van, then running ultramarathons across deserts and pilgrim trails. She set world records on the Via Francigena (1,014 kilometers in 21 days), the Camino de Santiago (780 kilometers in 12 days) and the Sinai Trail in Egypt (539 kilometers, a world first).

But she had barely seen her own country.

"I've done a lot of traveling abroad, went to all the states in the US, and yet have barely seen my own country," she told me from the road. "I want to use this opportunity to really understand this place I came from, and especially what it has become in the last two decades of rapid growth."

Thirteen days into the run, she crossed the border from Russia into China. She is now running toward Beijing.

When asked what she had eaten in China that made her smile the most, Ria described a love affair with the simplest of foods. 

"I can be very basic when I'm running," she said. "I've always loved just plain white rice, or a fluffy just-out-of-steamer mantou." As a child growing up in China, she loved carbohydrates so much she could eat them without any other dishes. "That has not changed a bit," she said. "The Chinese stomach is still a Chinese stomach."

The serenity prayer and the broken van

The first two weeks have not gone according to plan.

Food poisoning on day two. A videographer who could not show up. The Russia-China border not allowing pedestrians – she had to find a workaround. The support vehicle has already needed three repairs. A key crew member for a future section is no longer available.

"None of this is what I wanted, but neither are they within my control," Ria said. "Initially they stressed me out quite a lot, especially on top of the exhaustion of running 50 km a day."

She quoted the Serenity Prayer, a phrase that has carried her through difficult moments before.

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

"To differentiate between the things that we have control over and the things that we don't is exactly what control is about," she said. "To control our own ability to solve problems, to handle issues, to regulate our own emotions, to be the most ready for the challenge ahead."

"It's been over two weeks, and our support vehicle seemingly has problems on a weekly basis."

The morning routine

Each day begins the same way.

Xi wakes up in the RV. The first thing she does is collect data – weight, heart rate variability, an emotional assessment. The battery of tests takes about 30 minutes.

Then she answers messages from her remote crew, sponsors, friends and family. She tries to catch up on content work. Her crew member Jeremy makes breakfast. They eat together, sometimes with music playing.

Then comes the hardest part of the morning: finding a toilet.

"As we are moving about across the country every day, sometimes we'd end up camping in a remote parking lot in nature – great – or a more urban side street – not great."

After the chores are done, she puts on her running gear: clothing, shoes, a running vest loaded with water and food. The crew does a morning check-in – a new routine they developed to address the inevitable communication strains of strangers living in close quarters.

The science of 20,000 kilometers

This is not just an endurance challenge. It is also a research project – one that Ria has been designing for over a year.

Every morning, before she takes a single running step, she runs through her protocol. Weight. Heart rate variability. Emotional state. Cognitive function. Sleep quality.

"The 20,000 kilometer experiment is not just a metaphorical life experiment," she said. "I'm also trying to make it a real scientific experiment where we can study how my brain and my body change over the course of the run."

She is particularly interested in her brain. Extended ultra-endurance events are known to affect cognitive function, memory and emotional regulation. But no one has ever studied a brain over 20,000 kilometers and 14 months of daily ultramarathons. Ria wants to be the first.

Recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a brain scan on her.

"But this is just the start, or so I hope," she said. "We're hoping to acquire a few more scans along the route or after, in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Spain or Portugal."

She is actively looking for research partners. She wants to find institutions and researchers who can conduct additional scans – MRI, cognitive testing, physiological assessments – as she passes through their cities.

Her goal is transparent. "My plans and hopes is release any data I have access to afterwards to share publicly for further research." She does not want the science to stay in a lab. She wants it to be useful – for endurance athletes, for neuroscientists, for anyone curious about what happens to a human being who runs across a continent.

For Ria, the science is deeply personal. She wants to know how far the human body can go – and what it costs. But she also hopes the data will help others push their own limits.

"It's one thing to run," she said. "It's another thing to understand what the run is doing to you."

The books that carry her

Xi listens to audiobooks while she runs – sometimes up to 50 in a year. She recites the old Chinese proverb with delight: "Read thousands of books, walk thousands of miles."

"I'm literally doing both at the same time," she said.

One book changed how she sees the entire journey: Walk Through Walls, the memoir of performance artist Marina Abramović. "It led me to see how this run is a performance art piece," Ria said. "Using behaviors and action to nudge people to think about reality a little differently.

She hopes strangers who see her running, or watch her videos, will think: I guess we could live like that. Maybe I can do that scary thing I've always wanted to also.

She is strategic about her listening, choosing books that match the landscape. "I love listening to books about a place or fiction by local writers when I'm running through it. For example, I can't wait to listen to the biography of Ataturk once I get to Türkiye."

For Central Asia, she has queued up Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. "And if it gets too dry, I usually have a longer sci-fi as backup."

"I'm such a book nerd on these runs," she said. "It's one thing that gives me incredible joy."

And the song stuck in her head?

"The first line of Bohemian Rhapsody: 'Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?' My brain is still surprised that I am capable of doing something like this. I wake up just shocked by my own audacity to pursue such a big goal."

A family understood

For the last decade, Xi has been chasing success in fields and countries her parents did not understand. Silicon Valley tech. Van life. Ultramarathon records in Egypt.

"But this time," she said, "especially after crewing me for a few days in Russia, I think they understand now."

"It feels incredible to be understood and connected with my family again," she added.

When I asked what she hoped people would remember her run as, she did not hesitate.

"A social experiment that shows how people can come together to make dreams happen," she said. "And inspire others to do the same."

Editor's Note: Denique Daniëls is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This article is part of China in Motion, a recurring column that explores contemporary Chinese life through movement – from running and walking to the design of public space, health culture and community. By observing cities at a human pace, the series captures how ordinary routines shape the experience of life in China.