Five years after watching his business collapse and his marriage end, Chinese runner Li Shuangyong has turned personal loss into a record-breaking comeback story, by running a marathon every day for more than a year.
Spurred by a desire to “turn failure into something positive”, the 41-year-old has now secured an official Guinness World Record for the most consecutive days running a marathon distance (male), after completing 372 straight days of 42.195km runs.
Travelling from city to city across China, Li embarked on his daily 26.2-mile routine after first rising to internet fame last year for a fitness regime inspired by the Japanese manga One-Punch Man.
372 days, 34 regions, 300 cities
For his feat of extreme endurance, Li committed to running a full marathon every day across all 34 of the country’s provincial-level regions, starting from his hometown Heze in Shandong a year ago and visiting a new city almost daily.
Live streaming his journey, he covered more than 300 cities and logged over 15,000km, while also competing in official marathons in cities including Suizhou, Changsha, Hangzhou and Nanjing.
“I have been running for five years now, and every ordinary person has the chance to achieve something great,” the 41-year-old said.
“The prerequisite is that you must make up your mind, set a goal, hold on to a dream and persist. As long as you keep going, you can become an extraordinary version of yourself, and I want to prove through my actions that we can all do something amazing.”
Li officially secured the Guinness World Record in Jinan, Shandong on Sunday, capping his 372-day streak in front of fellow runners. He surpassed the previous benchmark of 366 days, set by Brazilian runner Hugo Farias in 2023, while running in Xinjiang, but kept going until he made it back to his home province for the verification ceremony.
Pain management with pedicures and iced tea
The road to the record was far from smooth.
Whenever painful foot corns flared up along his journey, Li would stop at local pedicure shops to have them carved out before returning to the road. He handled exhaustion with two one-litre bottles of iced tea and an electrolyte drink, then prepared to head to his next destination.
A recent medical check revealed slightly elevated creatine levels, but Li insisted his body remained balanced thanks to a manageable pace: each marathon took about five hours, at roughly five to seven minutes per kilometre.
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His daily routine followed a strict rhythm: driving into a new city each evening, checking into a hotel, then completing his morning marathon and breakfast before moving on again, prefecture by prefecture.
From “One Punch Man” challenge to full-time career
Li’s Guinness streak builds on an earlier viral challenge that first made him an online star.
He rose to prominence last year when it was revealed he had followed the same intense fitness plan as the hero in “One Punch Man”, Saitama, for 1,000 days starting on August 24, 2021. The brutal routine comprised 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats and a 10km run every day. By the end of the challenge, he had run more than 20,000km and completed more than a million repetitions of various exercises.
The Shandong native filmed his progress and shared it online, rapidly building a large following and attracting sponsors.
Impressed by his journey, Chinese sportswear brand Erke reached out to sponsor him as soon as his initial 1,000-day challenge ended; a partnership that has seen him go through seven pairs of running shoes over the past year.
What started as an endurance experiment has evolved into a full-time career, supported by brand partnerships, live-stream revenue and local running clubs that join him on the road. Li broadcasts his daily runs to 890,000 followers on Bilibili, his primary video platform.
Chasing “Dragon Balls” and the next finish line
Receiving the Guinness certificate did not signal the end of Li’s current run.
He revealed he plans to extend his daily marathon streak through the new year, aiming for a 520-day target that will ultimately finish in Lhasa, Tibet.
“We said early on that we would work hard to collect seven ‘Dragon Balls’ to fulfil our life dream,” Li said. “The 1,000-day training was our first Dragon Ball, and this year-long marathon challenge is the second. We still have five more incredible feats to accomplish.”
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For Li, the record is only the second chapter in a much bigger saga, one that blends anime-inspired discipline, livestream culture and a deeply personal quest to rebuild his life, one marathon at a time.
