More than 200 participants took part in the Suva Marathon challenge at the Nasese foreshore yesterday.

Suva Marathon president Jono Orton said the event was a success with increasing number of participants every year.

Orton said the event was a build-up to the main event to be staged in July next year.

“We’ve had the marathon three years in a row and each year the numbers of people running have increased.

“Basically the first year we had about 300, two years ago we had 600 and this year we had 850.

“Today was the first run for next year’s marathon. Next year we are hoping to get 900 to 1000 participants.”

As Pacific islanders are prone to Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs), Orton says, decreasing the stats was the main aim of the event.

“We are trying to organise races like this to get people to do their training basically every day of the week so that we can reduce NCDs and that’s the whole idea to get people running as much as possible.

“We had 250 runners altogether and this year is a build-up to the main Suva marathon which will be held next year in July. For the 21km we have it three times a year, this is the second one so the next one will be in April next year than the full 42 km marathon in July next year in Albert Park,” he said.