It should be a marathon for all, men and women, young and old.
This was the key words from permanent secretary for Youth and Sports Alison Burchell during the launch of the Island Chill 2017 Suva Marathon at the Holiday Inn on Monday.
Burchell said the marathon was a community event and training with colleagues was a great way to motivate each other and help in counteract non communicable disease.
“A marathon can be for everyone, it is a form of activity given that we have the highest rate of NCD related deaths in the Pacific and marathons are great physical exercise to help curb them.
“Running a marathon is an aspiration for some people to challenge themselves.
“I think that is a good thing for us to do because it’s challenging ourselves to do something differently. At the end of the day I would challenge the Suva Marathon to aspire to become like the London Marathon and the New York marathon so that we can become something different in the Pacific and attract other people to come,” Burchell said.
The full marathon of 42.2 kilometres that will start at 5:30am from Albert Park grandstand, the half marathon of 21.2km will start at 6:30am, the team marathon of four people running 10.55km each will start at seven along with the fun run of 8km. Suva Marathon Club president Sandeep Narayan said this was a way to achieve their goal which was to promote long-distance running as a sport in Fiji.
“The Island Chill Suva Marathon 2017 like it preceding events will have an 8km fun run and 10.55km team event and the long-distance categories the 21.1km half marathon and 42.2km full marathon.
“It’s fair to say the shorter runs are entry level events designed to build the public’s interest in the sport of running.”
Originally published by Fiji times: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=401811
Paulini Ratulailai
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
