I found this old Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon medal today.
Bib E-09973. Stained, faded, kept for 13 years.

This was where my running life started.
At 44, I started running. Now 57 old🧖🏻‍♂️

Before that, 20 years of smoking. My only “sport” was golf.

Maybe midlife crisis.
Maybe fear.
Maybe the body finally sent me a notice letter

No coach. No Garmin plan. No running friends.

My golf friends’ training programme was simple: golf, eat, gamble, drink, repeat.

So I went to YouTube and learned one thing. Belly breathing. That was my entire “advanced running science.”

My first KLSC Marathon, 2013.

Registration was already closed. I bought somebody else’s slot on the open market.

To this day, bib E-09973 is technically still under a Malay brother’s name.
Whoever you are, bro. Thank you.

At the start line, others looked like athletes.
I looked like a confused uncle trying to remember how to breathe.

I told myself one thing throughout the race. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I finished in 2 hours 1 minute. Missed sub-2 by 100 seconds.
One hundred seconds.

Then I got ambitious.
Half marathon became ultra. Then Ironman. Then mountaineering.

LSD, tempo, hill repeats. I trained like it was breakfast, lunch and dinner.

My golf friends watched me run hill repeats beside the course and asked, “Koh, you quit golf?” I had. I just found another kind of madness.

Even during hash runs, while everyone drank and talked after the trail, I would slip away for extra mileage. When asked where I was going,

I’d say, “I go buy 4D.” Actually, I was chasing mileage.

Then MCO came. And I lost my mojo.

Not suddenly.
Slowly. Quietly. Professionally.

Motorbike became my new love. Road, off-road, mud, dust. Running became Tuesday and Friday hash only.

These few years I rejoined local half marathons in JB races: around 2:30.

Iskandar two weeks ago: 2:58.
Last time I chased sub-2.
Now I chase cut-off within sub-3.

This year, I wanted to come back to KLSC Marathon 2026.
The race where it all began. But when registration opened, I couldn’t even log into the system. Website jam. Then full.

Maybe the system also knew this uncle had been lazy too long.

I am not asking for a slot to chase PB.

At 44, KLSC Marathon gave a former smoker his first running dream.
At 57, the same uncle just wants to find his 初心.

The simple joy of training, the quiet discipline, the morning run, the breathing, the feeling that the body is still alive.

KLSC Marathon 2026, if you are listening, can this 57-year-old uncle come home?
Not to win. Just to start again.
Bib E-09973 is still in my drawer. Waiting.