Offering kids mountains of ambition

Every weekend, Peng Yunxing eats breakfast around 10 am, then heads out alone to herd her family’s 20 buffaloes to a nearby hillside meadow where they graze.

The 12-year-old, who lives in a mountain village in Mangshi, Yunnan province, stays to watch over them until they are full, then herds them back down the hill, locking them into the cattle pen by around 6 pm.

Most of her time herding is spent running. “I have to run to gather the cattle,” she explained.

“They spread far apart across the hillside, some on one side, some the other. I dash back and forth to corral them all into one group.”

Going downhill demands even more running. “The buffaloes rush toward the river at the foot of the mountain to wallow after a long day of grazing, so they bolt fast and I have to keep up with them!”

Channeling that boundless energy and ability to quickly traverse tricky mountainside terrain, Yunxing recently entered her first 10-kilometer trail race, in Hebei province’s rain-soaked, muddy Chongli mountains, supported by Boundless Girls, a charity project that empowers young girls through sport.

She may be no stranger to steep climbs, slippery mud-covered descents and jagged rocky trails, but it was the first time she’d had a crowd cheering her on at the end of them.

“I was overjoyed,” she said. “So many people cheered for me. I knew I had to sprint all the way to the finish!”

She never called it training, she called it chores, but those weekend miles with the buffaloes had been preparing her for this all along.

In April, Boundless Girls, initiated by sportswear giant Nike, co-launched a seven-week campus running challenge with the China Foundation for Rural Development to help rural youth build consistent exercise habits.

The program attracted over 60,000 children from nearly 200 schools, more than 40,000 of whom were girls.

Each week, participants received a card to stamp each day they ran.

“Before, when I finished a run, it was just over. There was nothing to remember it by,” said Yunxing.

“But with this running log, I feel a real sense of accomplishment.”

Among all the participants, Yun­xing and 11 other girls earned the opportunity to receive trail running guidance from Yao Miao, often hailed as China’s “Queen of Trail Running”, and together they completed the 10-kilometer race at the Chongli 168 Ultra Trail on July 12.

Yunxing said the skills she learned from Yao will stay with her, even when she’s back herding cattle.

“The uphill techniques she taught us are really useful,” Yunxing said.

“The hills back home are not high, but steep, so going up is tough. Those skills will help save a lot of energy.”

Yao is the first and only Asian athlete to claim three Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) titles across different event categories.

She currently ranks world No 1 in the women’s 50km category on the International Trail Running Association (ITRA) performance index.

Earlier this month, Yao won the women’s title at the 2026 UTMB Val d’Aran Camins d’Her (Iron Roads) race, an event officially classified in the 100km category, but with an actual course length of 110km and an elevation gain of 6,400 meters. She finished in an impressive time of 13 hours, four minutes and 34 seconds.

She will travel to Chamonix, France, later this month to prepare for the 101km Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix (CCC) race at the UTMB World Series Finals in late August.