1 . William Purkey, a well-known professor of education, said, “Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth.” It seems like the perfect life philosophy-- and one I've learned to apply to running over the year.

But I didn't always feel this way. In my early days, when I weighed 240 pounds, I ran like everyone was watching and judging. If I was on a run and saw a car approaching, 1'dstop and pretend I was looking for something I'd lost. I bought the high-tech gear and clothes that I thought would make people believe I was a runner. And I didn't have a clue if the expensive shoes I was wearing were the right kind for me --I just wanted to look like I fit in with this group.

To be honest, I felt a certain satisfaction in believing that someone was watching. I really thought that other people cared about my performance. The best example of this was a combined, two-lap marathon in Florence, Italy. As I approached the finishing line, the crowd began to cheer. I was surprised. Here I was, thousands of miles from home, and the Italians were shouting for “IIpenguino.”

About 20 yards from the finishing, the truth set in when the winner of the full marathon went past me as I was finishing the half-marathon. No one was cheering for me. No one probably even noticed that I was finishing. I couldn't help but smile at my own illusion of self-importance.

That's when I realized I had been running for every reason except the right one. I ran to make other people happy, ran to live up to their expectations. But no one was watching --no one cared. So I decided I was going to run for me, just me, and gained a new enjoyment from the sport I hadn't truly experienced yet. I've learned to run like no one is watching.

So if you see me at race, and I look like a 60-year-old guy waddling（蹒跚） along, don't worry. I'm fine. The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.

2 . After graduating as a graphic design major in 2018, Chen Minlin didn't hunt for a job that fits it, but became a trekker (远足者).

“Completing different trekking routes is like collecting cards in childhood — a lot of fun,”the 24-year-old told China Daily.

Like Chen, more young people are going on journeys to rediscover the simple and beneficial joys of walking. According to Youxiake, a Hangzhou—based tour operator, more than 140,000 travelers signed up for trekking trips from May I to Oct 31. This represents a 9.3 percent increase over the same period last year.

For most trekkers, exploring nature by foot can help them keep fit. Hiking or trekking in nature enables them to breathe fresh air, gives the whole body a workout and keeps them away from the crowds in urban public places, making for a tranquil experience.

“I felt hat exposure 10 nature and physical exhaustion helped me counteract the negative effects of my distress (痛苦) at that time," Zhang Peng, 33, co-founder of Bejing Hiking Club, said.Trekking "is a liberating experience to enjoy the tranquility in the wilderness. And the exhausting climb makes me feel he vigor of life."

Trekking has, indeed, been integrated into his lifestyle. With great passion, Zhang has gone on many classic routes across the country. The longest trail he's ever finished was 240 kilometers.

With poor internet access in the wild, it encourages people to chat and interact with one another on the long walks along the rails. Zhang enjoys the social interaction, and the friendships it brings about.

For Liu Yanli, also a trekker, what she cherishes most is that the activity brings her mental strength.

Until this year, her life had always run smoothly and lacked hardship. She craved the sense of achievement that can be felt after overcoming the difficulties offered by trekking.

Ever since 2013, she's trekked in may countries, including Nepal, Japan, Greece, New Zealand, Italy and Jordan. In one situation, she fell she was at the point of collapsing, but she carried on. "I was impressed and moved by my willpower. I'd never experienced that felling in my daily life,"Liu said.

It's perhaps this unusual felling that appeals to more youths.“Each time when I came back from a trip, the contrast between the harsh conditions in the wild and my cozy home helps to strengthen my happiness in everyday life." Liu added.

3 . The damage that aging does to a body extends all the way down to the cellular level. But the damage increased by cells in older muscles is especially severe, because the cells do not reproduce easily and they become weaker as their mitochondria (线粒体), which produce energy, reduce in energy and number. A study, however, suggests that certain sorts of exercise may remove some of what time can do to our mitochondria.

Exercise is good for people, as everyone knows. But scientists have surprisingly little understanding of its cellular impacts and how those might vary by activity and the age of the exerciser. So researchers recently conducted an experiment on the cells of 72 healthy but sedentary (久坐的) men and women who were 30 or younger or older than 64. After baseline measures were established for their aerobic (有氧的) fitness, their blood-sugar levels and the gene activity and mitochondrial health in their muscle cells, the volunteers were randomly assigned to a particular exercise program.

Some of them did weight training several times a week; some did interval training three times a week on exercise bicycles; some rode exercise bikes at a appropriate pace for 30 minutes a few times a week and lifted weights lightly on other days. A fourth group, the control, did not exercise. After 12 weeks, the lab tests were repeated. In general, everyone experienced improvements in fitness and an ability io regulate blood sugar.

But more unexpected results were found in the biopsies (活组织检查) muscle cells. Among the younger subjects who went through interval training, the activity levels had changed in 274 genes, compared with 170 genes for those who exercised more appropriately and 74 for the weight lifters. Among the older group, almost 400 genes were working differently now, compared with 33 for the weight lifters and only 19 for the appropriate exercisers.

It seems exercise could help contain the decline in the cellular health of muscles associated with aging, especially if it was intense, says Dr. Sreekumaran Nair, the study's senior author. In fact, older people's cells responded in some ways more strongly to intense exercise than the cells of the young did - suggesting, he says, that it is never too late to benefit from exercise.