If you’ve watched China’s Miao Yao race at some point in her now almost decade-long career in trail running and ultrarunning, then you’ve seen her racing trademarks: a serious gaze and what feels like the deepest of wells from which she draws. While those things may be features of her personality, we learn through the new film “No Life Defined” by the brand Salomon that the outward-facing Yao is just a small part of a complex person and an even more complex life story.
While Miao Yao has almost a decade of success in trail running and ultrarunning, it is in the last few years that she has found joy and a sense of freedom through it. All images are screenshots from the film “No Life Defined.”
Growing up in rural China, where she demonstrated athletic potential as a youth, Yao left home to attend a state-sponsored sports boarding school. It’s in these schools that many of the country’s elite athletes cut their teeth in sports. During that time, Yao tried numerous sports, including running, but ultimately wasn’t good enough at any of them to continue a state-sponsored sports career.
Alone to choose her first adult steps, Yao forged into trail running and ultrarunning, as what she calls a “bounty hunter.” She says she ran a trail race or ultra almost every weekend, hunting podium positions and their prize money. Her podium finishes eventually garnered some attention, and she secured additional sponsorships to supplement her personal finances. Between 2017 and 2019, she was making a modest income as a professional trail runner.
[Editor’s Note: Click here to watch the film on YouTube.]
This overly frequent racing came to a screeching halt at the 2019 UTMB, though, where she DNFed with vision issues. It was just one of several physical and mental issues she was facing, which were increasingly inhibiting her running performance. Whether she wanted to or not, she was forced to confront the health consequences of these couple of years of overracing.
During a few years off from competitive racing, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, Yao worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. Somewhere through this challenging time, she began training regularly and her passion for running reignited. This time, she was motivated most by how running made her feel rather than by what running could do for her. By evolving her definition of what it meant to be a runner, she was able to return to competitive, international racing. In the last couple of years, she has experienced similar levels of success as before, but she says what’s most important is that she’s running with a new joy and freedom.
Presently Miao Yao is competing at the top of trail running and ultrarunning, but she’s also running with joy and freedom and what she calls a much healthier approach to the sport.
“No Life Defined” visits Yao in this new stage of her relationship with running, yet her challenging past — both as a rural youth who left home for state-sanctioned schooling and athletic development and as a younger pro trail runner chasing results to the detriment of all else — is felt in its undertones, interviews with her mother, and Yao’s own storytelling.
In the film “No Life Defined,” Miao Yao’s mom and family, along with her childhood in rural China, feature prominently.
We also experience Yao’s present highs and past lows through the film’s creative and colorful cinematography, highlighting Yao’s home and village and the scenery through which Yao runs both around her hometown and in clips from races around the world. We’re also allowed to witness loving exchanges Yao shares with her family.
While this is a film about Yao’s enduring relationship with running, it’s also a message for all of us: Indeed, our present and future selves do not have to be defined by our past.
In the film, Yao visits and runs with young school children and talks about how she wants everyone to chart their own course on what makes them happy in life.
