KEY POINTS:
Through the wind, rain and sweltering heat, through the dingy towns of central China, a little girl in shorts and singlet is running.
She's been on the road since July 3, when she set off from her home in Hainan, China's southernmost province, heading for Beijing, 3558km away. Her aim is to reach the Great Wall.
Pinned to her chest and back, like a competitor's bib, is a yellow cloth with red characters reading: "Olympic Spirit, Strong Body, Extreme Challenge, Honour for the Nation."
Eight-year-old Zhang Huimin is the most extreme example of the fervour for sporting success sweeping China a year before the Beijing Olympics, which will start on the auspicious 08/08/08.
At 20kg - the weight of a packed suitcase - and standing only 1.25m tall (just over 4ft), she looks tiny and fragile. For some she represents the Olympic spirit of determination to achieve against all odds, but for others, a kind of mania that may end in disaster.
Huimin had been preparing for more than a year. She got up every day at 2.30am and ran through the dark, deserted streets of her hometown, Lingao, completing a half-marathon before dawn. After school, she trained with makeshift weights before going to bed at 9pm.
Her father, Zhang Jianmin, has poured all his ambition into his exceptional but vulnerable daughter.
Certainly she seems happy. She leaps and laughs as she runs, apparently tireless. As dawn breaks, after three hours with scarcely a break, she doesn't even have to catch her breath.
"My favourite things are running and boxing. Daddy says running is good for my health. If I know boxing, I can beat up those trying to bully me," she says, while hanging one of her marathon medals around the neck of her teddy bear.
Huimin's ambition is to win gold at the 2016 Olympics, the first for which she will be old enough to qualify.
But Hong Kong-based sports doctor Professor Patrick Yung, who is affiliated to the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the Hong Kong Sports Institute, worries she will burn out - or worse - long before that.
Her father says he is doing all he can to keep her healthy.
"If injuries occur, we'll have to accept it. Walking on the street could get you into an accident. It's all fate."
This combination of fatalism, determination and unconventional science is also found in the Chinese Olympic team.
The schedule of Zhou Chunxiu, who won the women's London Marathon, is punishing. In the three months leading up to a major race, the 26-year-old runs more than 200km a week.
Her coach, Liang Song Li, says sometimes she runs more than 300km a week, twice the distance of other elite athletes.
Zhou says: "Before the London Marathon, I ran one marathon a day during the training. I was well prepared and trained hard. That's why I performed well in London. I trained intensively for three months, averaging 230-250km a week."
Yung says: " I think most elite athletes would suffer musculo-skeletal injuries or other problems even after just a few months of this kind of training."
Zhou knows the fate of other Chinese female athletes who have ended up crippled and penniless in middle age.
Under the Chinese system, she is employed by the state but is allowed commercial sponsorship.
She has bought a house and is saving money, to ensure she will manage when her career is over.
"I've heard of the injury cases. I'd be lying if I say I'm not worried at all," she said. "But being in this position, I'm not allowed to think too much about the future. It's more important to do well in today's competition."
Coach Liang believes such intensive training is the only way Zhou can beat physically bigger runners.
"Europeans have more bone density and better muscle quality. They're born with better physical condition and their diet structure is better than ours.
"We must be willing to take on more hardship and more intensive training, enduring more pain than average people can ever imagine. Then we can beat all our rivals."
Conventional sports medicine suggests being small is not necessarily a disadvantage for long-distance runners.
Little Huimin sees Zhou as a role model and heroine.
While in other countries, a social services department might question whether such a lifestyle is suitable for a child, the local government in Hainan has encouraged her.
Along the route to Beijing, she signs flags with Olympic mottos, like a minor celebrity.
"I run for the future," says Huimin. "I want to be a champion. I want to win honour for the country."
- Observer
