Gold Coast runner changing lives overseas after changing his own life

Growing up on the Gold Coast wasn’t easy for this Gold Coast runner.

GROWING up on the Gold Coast wasn’t easy for Matthew Barsing.

Living in Miami Caravan Park with his mother and three siblings, living a healthy lifestyle was never high on Barsing’s radar.

“I never bothered about exercise or eating healthy during my teen years and adult life, until 2014, when I started to run about 5km daily,” the 49-year-old said.

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Now residing in Kuala Lumpur as a business development expat, Barsing and his friends decided they were tired of being unfit and overweight and decided to wake up and run around KLCC park in the thriving metropolis.

When the three decided to weight themselves at the start of the challenge, Barsing was shocked to tip the scales at over 100kg, marking the start of his 20kg weight loss journey.

“I reduced my weight from 102kg to 80kg in three months and was hooked on running and started eating healthy and changed my life,” he said.

Matthew Barsing's incredible transformation. Supplied.

Soon, Barsing had competed in his first 5km fun run and a half marathon soon followed but it was the atmosphere of the running community which captured his heart.

“I fell in love with the amazing community,” he said.

“I decided to set up a small running group to see if I could find some friends to run with.”

From there, the KLCC Runners group was born and has grown to reach nearly 30,000 members just three years on.

Matthew Barsing with his KLCC running group. Supplied.

Each year the group holds over 250 free events and recently broke a club record.

“It has been so exciting and we recently had our largest group run with over 2,000 Members,” Barsing said.

“The community is for everyone and brings together all Nationalities, Races and Religions together as one huge family.”

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Now a few years on from his first lap of KLCC park, Barsing is returning to his native glitter strip to run the Gold Coast marathon for the first time along with 10 of his KLCC family.

Matthew Barsing in action, Supplied.

“This will be the most exciting event as Gold Coast is my home town and I’m also super excited to run in cooler weather and also the event being a flat course,” he said.

“I hope to get my personal best for full marathon, my previous PB is five hours eight minutes but I am targeting sub four hours 30 minutes.”