THE Cebu Marathon can again utilize the South Road Properties (SRP) as part of the route for the event’s 13th edition on Jan. 12, 2020, which starts and ends at the Cebu Business Park.
With the recent development, Cebu Marathon’s route will be just within Cebu City unlike the past two editions when it covered the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu to complete the 42-kilometer course.
The Cebu Executive Runners Club (CERC), the group behind the marathon, paid a courtesy call on Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella at the Mayor’s office on Friday, Oct. 4, 2019.
“We allow the use of SRP for sporting events, always. For as long as the organizing team can provide security to the runners and complete planning for the event,” said Labella.
Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 chief Debold Sinas assured the cooperation of the policemen to give security to the thousands of runners who will be competing.
CERC’s president Jesse Taborada said the return to SRP will further enhance the standard of Cebu Marathon.
“We are so glad that we’ve been given the chance to use SRP again. As the mayor said, as long as we keep cleanliness after the event it is surely a win-win situation,” he said.
Meyrick Jacalan of CERC said the route for the 2020 edition would be generally flat which can result in faster finish times.
For the first time, the participants in the 42K will pass two tunnels—the tunnel in SRP and the newly constructed tunnel in Mambaling.
Then Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña disallowed the use of the SRP for any sports event due to the construction of the Mambaling underpass.
Aside from the 42K, the other categories are the 21K and 5K. As of the recent count, there are already 2,000 registered runners. The organizers will set an early cutoff time so they can focus on the shirt sizing and the medals.
“In the 2019 edition, we got more than 3,000 runners. We are looking at more than that number but the registration will end by the end of November. We do this to eradicate the problem of shirt sizing,” said Taborada. (RSC)