I had just delivered a memorable speech, and I was about to learn how the judges decided my performance. The audience leaned forward and a period of silence fell across the room. I felt the drum rolled in my heart.

The third—place winner was announced. The name was not mine. Then the second—place winner, still not me. At last, the moment of truth came. I was about to either enjoy the warmth of victory or regret the months’ preparation. My heart felt closer to the latter.

Losing is a part of life, and I have dealt with it on more than one occasion. However, it was an indescribable feeling to drive a 200—mile round trip, get up very early on a freezing Saturday morning, and yet still finish fourth out of four competitors in my group. After Lincoln lost the 1858 Illinois Senate race, he said, “I felt like the 12—year—old boy who kicked his toe. I was too big to cry and it hurt too bad to laugh.” Oh yeah, I could understand.

I had spent many hours in front of a computer and in libraries doing research for the Lincoln Bicentennia Speech Contest. After not placing in the first year of the contest, I really wanted to compete again. Lincoln had many failures, but he never allowed them to defeat his spirit or ambition, so I was not going to give up on a second contest! I reworked my speech for the following year, but again I did not place.

I couldn’t accept the fact that I failed twice in something that I had worked so hard on, until I thought about my hero. Never mind the lost prize money and praise—through learning stories about Lincoln, I discovered that I can fail successfully.

“The benefits brought to my life from running are not only physical. Running gets me out of home,” says Youyou, a visually impaired (视觉障碍) runner.

Yachi has been pacing (领跑) for Youyou for several years. They crashed into each other repeatedly when they first tried running with the 30cm-long rope between them. When they run, a 30cm-long blue rope connects Youyou’s left wrist (手腕) to Yachi’s right. They move like each other’s mirror image, using the rope as a form of communication. When Yachi’s and Youyou’s speeds are the same, the rope will naturally relax. The two don’t actually need to talk too much about running. Now, they run like each other’s clones.

Thanks to the rope, running is no longer a lonely task, explains Yachi. “This is a matter of achievements for both of us. Not only am I helping him improve, he is also pushing me to hold on and be strong,” he says.

When preparing for a competition, more pacers join them, forming a running formation. During training, Yao Ying runs in front, Yachi is on Youyou’s left, and Xiao Yu’er is at the back. Watching them run from behind, the unbreakable formation seems to surround (包围) Youyou; but in fact, all of them are surrounded by the unbreakable force of friendship.

Training is no longer the only purpose of their runs. It also allows them to hang out together as friends. When they go out to eat, Youyou doesn’t really like the restaurants that are overly attentive because he’s visually impaired, which makes him feel uncomfortable.

Yachi, Yao Ying and Xiao Yu’er all know Youyou well. No matter what they do, how much progress in running is made, and what exciting competitions are waiting, running has allowed them to connect and head into the unknown together, which in itself is a great achievement.

Imagine this: you are twenty-one years old and a promising graduate student at one of the top universities in the world. One day, your doctor tells you that you have an incurable disease and may not have more than twelve months to live. How would you feel? What would you do? Here is what Stephen Hawking thought:

（There did not seem) much point in working on my PhD-I did not expect to survive that long. Yet two years had gone by and I was not that much worse. In fact, things were going rather well for me and I had got engaged to a very nice girl, Jane Wilde. But in order to get married, I needed a job,and in order to get a job, I needed a PhD.

Instead of giving up, Hawking went on with his research, got his PhD and married Jane. Nor did he let the disease stop him from living the kind of life he had always dreamt of. He continued his exploration of the universe and travelled around the world to give lectures. As his disease has disabled him, Hawking has to sit in his now-famous wheelchair and speak through a computer. He talked about his theories and thoughts on some of the greatest questions: What is time, how did the universe begin,and what exactly are black holes?

Hawking became famous in the early 1970s, when he and American Roger Penrose made new discoveries about the Big Bang and black holes. Since then, Hawking has continued to seek answers to questions about the nature of the universe. In 1988, he wrote A Brief History of Time, which quickly became a best-seller. Readers were pleased and surprised to find that a scientist could write about his work in a way that ordinary people could understand. The book sold more than 5.5 million copies in 33 different languages.