Milo elims end in Dumaguete, San Pablo

MANILA, Philippines - After eight months of nationwide search for fresh talents, the 33rd National Milo Marathon elimination finally comes to a close Sunday in the cities of San Pablo and Dumaguete.

Close to 9,000 runners are competing in San Pablo known as the “City of Seven Lakes” and 8,000 taking part in Dumaguete known as the home of one of the country’s oldest institutions – Siliman University.

San Pablo Mayor Vicente Amante will flag off the runners in San Pablo City.

Aside from the 21k elimination run, other events at stake in this Sunday’s simultaneous races held in partnership with Department of Tourism and the Bay View Park Manila are 10k, 5k fun run and 3k kiddie run.

The top three runners in the 21k will win P10,000, P6,000 and P4,000 plus a trip tickets to the finals if they meet the qualifying standard 1:15 for men and 1:30 for women.

Of the 26-leg, three-island hopping elimination races supervised by Milo Marathon national organizer Rudy Biscocho, only the cities of Santiago in Isabela and Tagbilaran, Bohol did not produce qualifiers to the National Finals on Oct. 11.

Few provincial runners qualified to the finals because of the time barrier introduced by the organizers for the first time to make the elimination races highly competitive and acceptable to diehard marathon enthusiasts.

The organizers introduced the time barrier this year unlike in the previous stagings of the country’s longest running footrace to raise the level performance of the runners.