- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter, or Telegram and WhatsApp channels for the latest stories and updates.
Lim Shyang Guey is not a marathon runner – he wants you to know that upfront.
He has done a half marathon — one — and that is more or less the extent of his competitive running history.
He is 66 years old and has been retired for two years.
Every morning now, he drinks a protein shake, laces up his ASICS, and runs between 25 and 35 kilometres.
He does this because his wife cannot.
Joo Lee passed away in August 2024 at 63 – the cause was cancer.
2,200 Kilometres, 90 Days, One Promise To Keep
The two of them had talked, for years, about travelling around Peninsular Malaysia on foot.
It was one of those dreams that couples carry quietly — not urgent, not scheduled, just there, waiting for the right time, but the right time never came.
So on 28 March, Lim will set off alone from the National Cancer Society of Malaysia’s (NCSM)‘s Home of Hope in Penang and run the journey they had planned together.
All 2,200 kilometres of it.
Through all 11 states and federal territories.
Finishing, if everything goes to plan, on 22 June — his 67th birthday.
He has named it Run for Gold.
Lim Is Raising Money, He Is Also Raising A Question
Grief doesn’t always look like grief; sometimes it looks like a 66-year-old man making protein shakes and planning a 2,200-kilometre run.
Lim doesn’t use that word anyway.
He uses love — plainly, without fuss, the way you say something you’ve long since stopped doubting.
He is hoping to raise RM600,000 for childhood cancer awareness and support services through the NCSM — specifically for the Home of Hope, psychosocial care, and survivorship programmes for young patients and their families.
But spend a few minutes with Lim, and it becomes clear that the story he is really telling is a wider one.
The Chair Beside The Bed Has Its Own Story
When Joo Lee was ill, she received treatment in Australia, where she held citizenship, at no cost to the family.
Lim sat in those wards and waiting rooms for months, watching what cancer does not just to the person in the bed, but to the person in the chair beside them — the caregiver who stops sleeping, stops eating, and reorganises their entire life around the particular mathematics of hope.
The awareness he wants to raise is not only about early detection or donation figures, but also about the full weight of what cancer costs and about building support infrastructure that catches not just patients but the people who love them.
Before all of this, Lim spent his career in mobile telecommunications, including helping set up networks in Vladivostok, Russia, in the industry’s early days.
He worked across borders and time zones — 25 of those years based in Singapore — until he retired two years ago, not because he had run out of things to do, but because his wife needed him home.
He is, in other words, not a man who has ever done things by halves.
He Runs, They Watch, That Is How Love Sometimes Works
The 2,200 kilometres will take approximately 90 days, staying mostly with local families, running into major towns to share meals, shake hands, and listen — then running out again the next morning.
He is looking forward, he says, to the stretch through Melaka — where his wife spent some years of her life.
Lim thinks more people his age should run — not marathons, not 2,200 kilometres, just a little more than walking — because when you run, you meet people, someone knows someone, you end up at ‘yamcha’ (tea session), and you end up with more life than you had before.
Retirement, in Lim’s telling, is not a closing down.
His son is 28, and his daughter is 32; they both live in Australia.
They will be watching from there.
Run for Gold begins on 28 March, from the NCSM–MPPP Home of Hope in Penang. Donations and further information are available at runforgold.my. Members of the public are welcome to join Lim for any stretch of the run along the route. To donate, transfer directly to The National Cancer Society of Malaysia, Alliance Bank account 1408 200 1313 2532, with the reference Run For Gold.
The Man Who Promised His Wife A Walk Around Malaysia
Entertainment Flash Report
Comments
Post a Comment