The tenth ‘Nainital Monsoon Marathon’ was organised by the Run to Live organisation here on Sunday. More than 600 people participated in different categories in this run.
The run was flagged off by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) executive director Vinay Sah, Olympian Suresh Chandra Pande and Uttarakhand dairy federation managing director Prakash Chandra and others.In the main 21 kilometre run, among the men, Stephen from Kenya came in first followed by Vipin of Ranikhet and army man Anil Yadav in the second and third positions respectively. In the women’s category, Arpita from Muzaffarnagar came in first followed by Renu from Amroha and Seema Patel from Varanasi in the second and third positions respectively. In the veterans category, Damodar from Nepal came in first followed by Anil Kumar from Gurugram and Charan Singh from Meerut in the second and third positions respectively. The theme of this year’s run was ‘say no to drugs’. The run began at 7 AM from the Mallital band stand. The participants ran through Mall Road, Snowview road, Raj Bhawan road and Barapatthar to return to Mall Road and then to Pant Park. Despite it being a rainy day, about 600 people participated with enthusiasm in the run. Apart from Kenyan runners, participants in the event came from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and the host State Uttarakhand among other places. For the first time, 18 children from a remote village of Bageshwar district and 10 chidlren from Gaulapar in Haldwani also participated in the event.
As part of the competition, two children were presented with the DN memorial award while the students of model Government girls inter college were presented the Pyare Lal Sah memorial award. Veterans were presented award in the memory of Nainital’s noted advocate, the late Nand Prasad.