Reign­ing cham­pi­ons George Towett (Kenya/USA) and Tonya Nero (T&T) are among the seed­ed run­ners who will join more than 1,000 top lo­cal and for­eign par­tic­i­pants at the mile­stone tenth an­niver­sary of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion (UWIS­PEC) In­ter­na­tion­al Half-Marathon, which is card­ed to run off at 5.50 am, on Oc­to­ber 27, in front of the sport­ing cen­tre's St Au­gus­tine Cir­cu­lar venue.The 13.1-mile First Cit­i­zens-spon­sored char­i­ty race, which is sanc­tioned by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions and has grown from some 300 run­ners in since its in­cep­tion to the record 1,010 ath­letes, is a traf­fic-free event, which starts and fin­ish­es at UWI Spec with La Re­source, D'Abadie, (via the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route) used as the turn-around point.

Twen­ty-five run­ners are seed­ed, in­clud­ing lo­cals Richard Jones (last year's run­ner-up), Matthew Ha­gley, Cur­tis Cox, as well as St Lu­cia's Zephyrenus Joseph, St Vin­cent's Pa­menos Bal­lan­tyne, Nige­ria's Mary Akor, among oth­er house­hold names.The race main­tains its traf­fic-free sta­tus.It of­fers $150,000 in cash prizes, with the win­ner in the male and fe­male open/in­ter­na­tion­al events pock­et­ing US$2,000 each. For fur­ther in­cen­tive, the or­gan­is­ers have al­so of­fered US$1,000 to both the male and fe­male run­ner who suc­cess­ful­ly breaks the course record.Speak­ing at the launch of the event at the UWI, St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day, di­rec­tor of the UWIS­PEC, Justin Lat­apy-George, said the mis­sion of the marathon is to "pro­vide a recog­nised and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-ap­proved com­pet­i­tive av­enue with­in the re­gion that is syn­ony­mous with pro­fes­sion­al ex­e­cu­tion and con­sis­ten­cy un­der the aus­pices of the UWI.

"As part of our 2013 ex­e­cu­tion plan, the half marathon will seek to pro­mote the el­e­ment of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty en­trenched with­in the UWI's strate­gic per­spec­tives of out­reach."'The 10 Ini­tia­tive,' a new com­po­nent to the race which al­lows ten specif­i­cal­ly-cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives, both of the pub­lic and with­in the cam­pus, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to run for a char­i­ty. The ten were se­lect­ed based on their stand­ing with­in the pub­lic and/or the uni­ver­si­ty's com­mu­ni­ty, as well as our be­lief that they will in­vite and en­cour­age the type of sup­port that will make the ob­jec­tive of this ini­tia­tive a suc­cess.The ten per­sons named were: Will Iton (UWI reg­is­trar, Stu­dent Bur­sary), Stephen Shep­pard (UWI di­rec­tor, HR, Habi­tat For Hu­man­i­ty), James Saun­ders (me­dia, Is There Not A Cause), Ja­son Williams (me­dia, Break the Si­lence), Gol­da Lee-Bruce (me­dia, Guardian Need­i­est Cas­es Fund), John Don­ald­son (First Cit­i­zens, Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety of T&T), Re­na­ta Sankar (UWI staff, T&T Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence), Je­re­my Bel­lamy (UWI, Ar­rive Alive), Ker­rie-Kim Kir­ton (Kei­th Stan­ford So­bion Foun­da­tion) and Ster­le Tim­o­thy (UWI stu­dent/ath­lete, Syphil Home in Love).Reg­is­tra­tion be­gan yes­ter­day and is set to close on Oc­to­ber 18, or be­fore once the lim­it of 1,010 en­tries is reached.