'Powerhouse of positivity' The runner whose race ended at 114

The first 20 miles of a marathon are not difficult, Fauja Singh once said. When it came to the last six miles, however, "I run while talking to God."

- Esther Addley

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 veteran, a record holder for his age group and a poster model for Adidas. Aged 101 – or so he believed, since he never had a birth certificate – he became the oldest person ever to run the distance.

This week, at the age of 114, Singh's race finally came to an end. He was hit by a car while crossing a road in his birth village of Beas Pind, near Jalandhar in Punjab, and suffered fatal injuries. A man has been arrested, according to Indian police.

At Singh's former home in Ilford, east London, where he discovered running and trained, his friends have been remembering a man who, in the words of his former trainer Harmander Singh (no relation), was "an icon of humanity and a powerhouse of positivity".

"We wouldn't say we were ready for [his death], but these circumstances certainly didn't help," he said on Thursday, from the park where they used to train together. "It did catch us by surprise."