Organizers assure safety of Cebu City Marathon participants

Following Wednesday night’s bomb explosion that left several people injured in Hilongos town, Leyte, security will be tight in the 10th Cebu City Marathon (CCM) slated January 8 at the Cebu Business Park grounds.

Kenneth Casquejo, president of Cebu Executive Runners Club (CERC), said organizers have already taken steps to ensure the safety of the participants that will feature four distances — 42-kilometer, 21k, 10k and 5k.

As of yesterday, Casquejo said a total of 3,752 runners have already signed up, including 154 foreign participants.

“We are well aware of the situation in Hilongos. We are going to provide full security to our participants considering that there will be a lot of foreign runners that will be joining the race,” said Casquejo. “In fact, we already had a coordination meeting with the AFP-Central Command, PNP, medical teams and officials of various barangays which are part of the race route.”

Casquejo said the Central Command will be deploying enough personnel during the race day. “We are expecting that there will be a lot of uniformed personnel coming from the PNP and AFP during race day and also barangay tanods who will be deployed along the route. There will be a general meeting on January 5 regarding the security of the race. We will assure every participants a safe, secured and an enjoyable race,” added Casquejo.

International flavor

Foreign runners set to participate will come from American Samoa, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Pitcairn Islands, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States.

Most of the foreign runners are from Japan as around 30 Japanese runners have already signed up. The race has already attracted 21 American runners and 16 Singaporeans.

So far, 1,352 runners have signed for 42k full marathon, 1,640 for the 21k, 447 for 10k and 313 for 5k race.

The event, which will be held in line with the Sinulog Festival, will be giving out huge cash prizes to the winning runners in the male and women’s division in each distances.

The 42k foreign/open as well as local/All Filipino category champions will get P15,000 each while the second placers will receive P10,000 apiece. Third places will bring home P5,000.

The first to third placers in the 21k will get P10,000, P7,000 and P5,000 respectively. The 5k races will give P5,000 to the top placers, P2,000 for the second placers and P1,500 for the third placers.

Runners with the best costume will also receive cash prize.