We sat on the floor of a rotunda room laid out with traditional carpets. Lean and youthful in his early sixties, Ali Asiri told me that he has been practicing sports for about 40 years of his life.
"I started very late. Back then sport was not part of our culture. I was the first and only athlete in my community. It wasn't part of our everyday life," recalled Ali.
Growing up in Soudah, his family did not have a television at home. "There were no distractions, just a simple village life," remembered Ali. Outside of school, he spent most of his time working in the wheat fields, tending to the harvests on his family's land, and helping his father around the farm.
"We went to the valley every day, moving back and forth and covering long distances on foot." Ali said these walks and the hard work involved in growing crops laid the foundations for his athletic training in early childhood.
"It required both physical endurance and energy," he said. "But as I grew older, I wanted to give myself a bigger challenge, so I started engaging in other activities and then came to sport."
Now a father of nine, he won his first marathon in 1985 and has since been encouraging his children to follow his lead.