It starts with delusion, then becomes reality: running from Asia to Europe
Letting the Ancient Silk Road guide her, 27-year-old Ria Xi is going to run the length of Eurasia.
Starting in Vladivostok, Russia, Ria will be averaging a 50km ultramarathon each day as she runs to her end destination in Lisbon, Portugal.
By the end of the 15-month journey, her own feet will have taken her 20,000km across Eurasia. She will become the first person to complete this feat.
The former Silicon Valley tech employee started running only a couple of years ago. She’d quit her job to chase after the ideal “dream” of travelling full-time. However, while living out that dream life in a van, Ria found herself questioning all her decisions. A breakup made the storm clouds rumble louder.
So, to take back control of her life, Ria challenged herself to run every day for 30 days.“And then I just thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can run a little further, and then, a little further,” she shares. Next thing, Ria ran a 50km ultramarathon. A year later, she became the first person to run the 529km Sinai Trail through the Sinai Desert in Egypt.
While she was out running, running away from her fears, her heartbreak, her indecisiveness, she found herself again. “I rediscovered the little girl full of hopes and dreams before the world told her what she can and can’t do,” Ria says.
Then, she was at a crossroads. It was decision time. “I could go back to my life before - working in the United States, trying to make it in the tech industry,” Ria says. “Or, I could try to see if this running thing was the beginning of something new.”
She chose to live with an experimental mindset, writing out five possibilities for the next chapter of her life. One was to commit to ultra running. “There are so many possibilities and so many things I want to do,” Ria says. “With my ADHD and neurodivergence, this helped me make a decision.”
By the end of 2025, Ria found herself living in a surf town near Lisbon. She has 100 days until she begins her run on May 1. “I’m a bit scared, to be honest. The clock is just ticking down for me,” she shares.
Ria schedules two to three hours a day for training. This isn’t just pure running, but includes recovery stretching and gym workouts. She’s already claimed the Fastest Known Time along the Spanish Camino and the Via Francigena - no stranger to ultramarathon distances.
But it’s not just body preparation, there are the logistics to organise as well. Ria will be crossing through 50 countries on her mission. “Every day is an on day for me,” she says. Her team is growing, though. People believe in her mission.
“I felt really lonely last year, it was like people didn’t fully understand what I was doing,” she says. “But now with social media, I’m getting tons of messages that are bigger than myself, and I’m feeling very overwhelmed in the best possible way with the support and care. The stories I’m telling are resonating with other people,” she says. People are starting to run because of her, some even completing ultramarathons. All inspired by her running journey.
She says she was always critical of influencer culture on social media. “But I realise creating content online should not be about making money, rather it’s about providing value,” Ria says. “And the value that you provide is something that can inspire people do better things in their lives.”
Social media is home to the documentation of her journey. It’s also holding her accountable. “People are growing with me. It’s like a reality TV show of my life,” she says. Ria is crowdsourcing for the run too - five euros funds one kilometre.
The Planetary Running Club's mission
Ria’s adventure has become bigger than herself. She says the focus isn’t that “she’s going out for a big run,” rather, she wants to shine a light on meeting locals along the way, inviting them to run with her.
“It’s not just about the endurance aspect; it’s really about the Planetary Run Club I want to create,” Ria explains. She wants to share stories of local runners and community groups. “Community is super important to me,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons that I am where I am doing what I’m doing now, as me.”
Reflecting on her Sinai desert run, she says it was extremely rewarding when her friends met her - at that point, feverish, with a rolled ankle, worried that she wouldn’t finish - and ran the last 10 kilometres by her side as the sun sank into the desert. “It was surreal. I’ve never felt this kind of belonging and support in my life,” she says.
“Usually, I’ve been a lone wolf kind of person growing up, and training by myself. But that moment in the desert was really special for me to understand that I can have this and I can feel the love and support from others.” Part of that run included fundraising for displaced families from Gaza living in Cairo.
Photo by Jack Lawes
This feeling broadened her perspective on her place in the world. “Instead of just trying to do what feels right for me, I think about what value I provide within a network or community,” she says. “Whatever the size, whether that’s the city I’m staying in, or the running community, or the planetary community we’re in…”
She has a philosophy where everyone she meets on her run is considered a neighbour. “So going on these big runs helps to demonstrate that we’re all actually very connected and we all share lots of similarities despite the differences that are portrayed on the news that try to divide us. Humans are humans.”
“My run, at the core of it, is a storytelling project; it’s about spreading the message of hope,” Ria continues. “We can’t live in a better future if we can’t even imagine one, and I want to remind people that there’s good out there.”
Timing will be tight. She’s starting in May to avoid Central Asia’s deep winter. But she will still have to run in temperatures ranging from negative five to ten degrees in Turkey. Due to the strict transit visa restriction, she’ll only have five days to cross Turkmenistan.
Born in China, she says she’s most excited to run through there. “I already know the food is gonna be bomb,” she says. “Like I’m gonna be eating so well, every single day there.” She will say hi to her parents as she runs through Beijing.
Audiobooks will be her running university along the way. Last year, she listened to more than 50 books while on long runs. A Chinese proverb tells us, “Read 10,000 books, walk 10,000 miles.” Ria is out combining the best of both worlds - learning as she travels across cultures.
Ria says she always runs for the first hour without headphones, though, not wanting to isolate herself from the world. “I go through a body scan and do these mind games to get myself present,” she says. “It’s about going into the pain, not running away from it. This running thing has been a really healing journey for me.”
While writing a letter to her future self to read once she has finished the run, Ria says she reflected on Walt Whitman’s Poem, ‘O Me! O Life!’…
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
And the verse Ria is contributing to the play of her life?
“It’s only delusional until it’s not,” she says.
She’ll see us again at the finish line, or better yet, joining her for a run along the way.