{"id":72951,"date":"2025-07-19T20:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/jul\/19\/fauja-singh-marathon-running"},"modified":"2025-07-19T20:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:00:20","slug":"when-you-get-old-you-become-young-again-remembering-fauja-singh-the-marathon-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72951","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When you get old, you become young again\u2019: remembering Fauja Singh, the marathon man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a life shaped by grief and resilience, Singh began running at 89 and became an icon of endurance and joy<\/p>\n<p>The first 20 miles of a marathon are not difficult, Fauja Singh <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sikhtimes.com\/bios_041904a.html\">once said<\/a>. When it came to the last six miles, however, \u201cI run while talking to God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact that he was attempting the distance at all might seem, to some, proof of divine assistance. Singh was 89 when he first took up distance running, having stumbled across a TV snippet of people running a marathon, and decided to give it a go. By his mid-90s he was a marathon veteran, a record holder for his age group and even a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalindian.com\/story\/global-indian-exclusive\/fauja-singh-remembering-the-114-year-old-marathoner-who-replaced-beckham-and-outran-time\/\">poster model for Adidas<\/a>; aged 101 \u2013 or at least so he believed, since he never had a birth certificate \u2013 he became the oldest person ever to run the distance.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/jul\/19\/fauja-singh-marathon-running\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a life shaped by grief and resilience, Singh began running at 89 and became an icon of endurance and joyThe first 20 miles of a marathon are not difficult, Fauja Singh once said. When it came to the last six miles, however, \u201cI run while talking t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,215,3363,2195,1222,3364,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-london","category-marathon","category-marathon-running","category-older-people","category-running","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72952,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72951\/revisions\/72952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}