As we celebrate Global Running Day, this is the running story of the co-founder of ArenaMalaysia Asia – Afif Abd Halim
There was a time when he looked like he had every reason to stay in sport forever.
A former state athlete. A school football player who once lived for competition. A super bike enthusiast who saw speed not just as adrenaline, but as identity.
And later, a sports media entrepreneur, building stories around athletes who were doing what he once did best – performing at their highest level.
Sport shaped him, defined him, and carried him through every stage of his life.
But life has a way of changing even the strongest rhythm.
It began quietly, then aggressively. A diagnosis of arthritis changed everything.
Not just pain, but immobility. Swollen feet. Days when walking felt like a negotiation with every step.
There were moments, especially during overseas assignments, where he had no choice but to rely on painkillers just to get through the day.
From the outside, he was still present – filming, producing, interviewing athletes, standing in the same spaces he once dominated. But inside, there was a different kind of battle.
Because for someone who had lived through sport, being unable to move freely felt like a contradiction. Worse still, being surrounded by elite athletes every day made it heavier. Watching others run, train, compete, while he quietly managed pain that no camera ever captured.
“When will I compete again?” “Will I ever feel normal again?”
There were moments of frustration. Moments of silence. Moments of questions.
And the hardest part was not just the pain, but the emptiness that came with it.
The feeling of being present in sport, yet unable to fully participate in it.
Then came the turning point.
Surgery. Treatments. Medication. Rehabilitation.
A long process of rebuilding something most people take for granted: the ability to move without pain.
It was not a comeback story yet. It was survival first.
But Afif didn’t stop there.
Slowly, painfully, he began to reclaim movement.
First walking. Then jogging. Then running every day.
Not for performance, not for recognition, but for something deeper: ownership of his own body again.
And somewhere in that process, something shifted.
The same man who once felt “behind” in a room full of athletes began to understand something different. He wasn’t outside the sport. He was still in it. Just from another angle.
Today, Afif Abd Halim is not just recovering. He is rebuilding.
He is now training for his first triathlon and preparing for ultramarathon distances, pushing into a new chapter defined not by limitation, but by possibility.
Because for him, running was never just about speed or medals.
It was about identity, resilience, and the will to keep moving forward.
As we celebrate Global Running Day, his story reminds us that even when life forces you to stop, the courage to start again is what truly defines a runner.
What makes his journey powerful is not the past he came from, but the decision he keeps making every single day: to move forward, even when it’s uncomfortable.
And now, even after pain, doubt, surgery, and setbacks, he is proving something quietly but clearly:
That a diagnosis is not a definition.
That a setback is not an ending.
He stopped asking who he used to be, and started focusing on who he could still become.
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