The photos of Chinese sportswoman, track and field athlete Li Meizhen, where she finished a marathon despite of her periods was started unexpectedly, went viral again.

The episode took place back in 2024, when Li was competing in the Hengshui Lake Marathon. The athlete needed to complete two championship marathons that season to earn points for her team. When she was 5 miles from the finish line, Li’s period arrived. But rather than quitting the race to prevent visible stains, the runner powered through, aware that completing the marathon was much more important than getting some period blood on her clothes and legs.

“Thank you to everyone for your support and encouragement,” Li wrote on social media. “Honestly, I was afraid that people online would say, ‘Has she gone crazy? Why didn’t she withdraw when this happened?’ But by the time it happened, I’d already passed the 34-kilometre (about 21 miles) mark. It would have been a shame to withdraw from a championship race. If I withdrew, I would have had to run another full marathon. That’s why I was determined to finish, even if my time wasn’t great. Thank you for your concern, I’m okay and nothing serious happened.”

Li is far from the first marathon runner to deal with the unexpected start of her period on race day. In 2015, Kiran Gandhi decided to run the London Marathon without a pad or a tampon to avoid the risk of chafing or worse, toxic shock from a backup tampon. “To me, it made far more sense to do the race without any foreign objects in my body, take some Midol, and just run,” Gandhi wrote for TIME Magazine. “While I didn’t think this would be such a big deal, as I started to run, I realized it was. I realized that, while I had the freedom to reject my own shame that day, millions of people who menstruate around the world do not because of the stigma still associated with periods.”

Gandhi also stated, “While menstrual practices vary across different cultures, menstrual stigma is the global common thread. The menstrual cycle is the bedrock of the human race. Without it we wouldn’t exist. If we want to make the world a better place, we have to start combatting taboo now—and, in the process, make it easier for women and girls to access their fullest potential. The good news is that this is something we can actually win within our lifetime. The future is female.”

source of the text: https://mymodernmet.com/marathon-runner-period/