Cao Pengfei

In the winter of 2020 in Caohai, Weining, Guizhou, there were several heavy snowfalls. Cao Pengfei ran along the road, with snowflakes falling silently on his shoulders, and in this way, ran through the whole winter.

Compared to other professional athletes, Cao Pengfei's path to cross-country running started late. His father died early and his mother was in poor health, so he had to take temporary jobs around the house in order to take care of the family and do farm work, and according to Pole Day Studio, his most recent job was as a chauffeur. It wasn't until 2020 that Cao Pengfei devoted himself to marathoning, desperately competing in races to make a living.

Searching for the mark he left on the world, even today with such advanced online media, the footprints of ordinary people, like shooting stars gliding across the sky, can only leave a few strokes. We finally found Cao Pengfei at the age of 28 on Anhui TV's "Boys and Girls Go Forward", a sports competition programme on November 18, 2014.

Wearing a bright yellow vest, he ran out of the red archway, hammering his left hand across his chest and flashing a thumbs up to the sky. The host teased him about his less than 5'7" height and his "small frame but big energy", but he didn't care, and when the microphone came to his mouth, he yelled "Very excited! which sent the MC into a shock.

The final hurdle of the race was to climb up the rope with the water pouring down over his head, Cao Pengfei slipped, but immediately got up, gritted his teeth and continued upwards to finish sixth in the final in one minute and 26.4 seconds.

After this experience, he competed in many marathons and steeplechase races. "He believes he can run," the family wrote on social media. They gave Cao Pengfei the statistics that he has won 14 national running titles since 2016 and is also the record holder for the marathon for men in the mass category in Anhui province.

In September 2020, Cao Pengfei was supposed to be the first to clock in at CP1 at the China Xixia-Fu Niu Mountain trail race in Henan. But it was a big downhill on the road, and the clocking point was another 20 metres up the hill on the right-hand side, but as the road was wide, Cao Pengfei didn't pay attention to the signposts and quickly ran past.

Only after the second place passed the CP1 5 or 6 minutes later, Cao Pengfei puffed and ran back and re-punched the clock.

In a cross-country race, a wrong run is a big mistake, especially when Cao Pengfei had already put a long distance between him and the second place, a wrong run would have meant a gap of more than 10 minutes between the two, and with Cao Pengfei's ability, he could have run at least two kilometres more. Even so, Cao Pengfei overtook second place and won the race. "He's still very capable", said one of the runners in the field.

Cao Pengfei still wanted to be stronger. Last winter, he contacted the team of Ji Zhengquan, also a runner, to attend winter training in Guizhou, where he started running along the road at 9am every day, running 30km a day without fail.

Sometimes, Ji Zhengquan knows that Cao Pengfei facetimes with his daughter, a cute five or six-year-old girl who also likes running. The family wrote on Weibo that on May 21, the day before the race, Cao Pengfei took two eggs stuffed by his wife and headed to Baiyin, Gansu, telling his daughter, "Daddy won a prize this time to give you a big birthday."

It was through the media that the family learned the sad news on May 23. The daughter asked her mother, "What do they mean by death, you go and get Dad back."