It's race week in T&T and the par­tic­i­pants, all 30 of them down from the orig­i­nal 40, will chase their re­spec­tive fit­ness goals in com­plet­ing the 40th edi­tion of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM) on Sun­day, from 4 am. Walk­ers are sched­uled to leave two hours ear­li­er.

The an­nu­al 26.2-mile race, which is be­ing ded­i­cat­ed to sport­ing icon An­tho­ny "Tony" Har­ford, who passed away on De­cem­ber 3, re­turns as a small­er event af­ter it was held vir­tu­al­ly last year, be­cause of the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

It will, how­ev­er, have its tra­di­tion­al start­ing point from Freeport with the fin­ish line at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain.

The in-per­son race is lim­it­ed to 40 per­sons, who were se­lect­ed last month but ac­cord­ing to TTIM chair­per­son Di­ane Hen­der­son the num­bers dwin­dled, part­ly due to the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic.

"There is not as many women com­pet­ing this year, ten women, down from the ini­tial 20. Fam­i­ly life, not be­ing able to train due to be­ing home with their kids," said Hen­der­son. "This was some­thing Mr (Bri­an) Lewis (T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent) raised at our an­nu­al women's con­fer­ence. He in­di­cat­ed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has im­pact­ed women more and we can see ev­i­dence of this with the marathon.

"So there are sev­er­al rea­sons, not specif­i­cal­ly COVID, why some of the peo­ple short­list­ed (20 women, 20 men) are not com­pet­ing," said Hen­der­son. "Ac­tu­al­ly on­ly one per­son in­di­cat­ed that they had symp­toms and wasn't well but I haven't got­ten con­fir­ma­tion that they did in­deed con­tract the virus.

"This is the pe­ri­od we are op­er­at­ing in and have to treat with it as best we can. There has been a line of re­grets - one per­son mi­grat­ed to Ire­land, sev­er­al oth­ers pulled out be­cause they haven't been train­ing and don't feel they could not run at the lev­el they want to, to run the time they want to. Some run­ners felt that they could not give 100 per cent.

"But, we are hop­ing to have a small but an ef­fec­tice race fol­low­ing the pro­to­cols, of course."

The event, though lim­it­ed in some ways like race or­gan­is­ers re­duc­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties at the fin­ish line as they want no con­gre­gat­ing, will be used to ho­n­our and recog­nise Har­ford for his con­tri­bu­tions to the TTIM through­out the race's ex­is­tence.

"We are do­ing a small char­i­ty for un­der­priv­iledged ath­letes. Part of his lega­cy was help­ing the un­der­priv­iledged and we plan to con­tin­ue this by hav­ing this char­i­ty.

"They have been con­tribut­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the race no mat­ter what their cir­cum­stances. So we are sup­port­ing them in Har­ford-style with this char­i­ty," said Hen­der­son, who al­so men­tioned that two of the par­tic­i­pants in Sun­day's race has been com­pet­ing since the ini­tial race in 1983.

Hen­der­son al­so shared that the marathon is still open for par­tic­i­pants to fill the va­cant spots to com­plete the list of 40 par­tic­i­pants. How­ev­er, in­ter­est­ed per­sons must be ca­pa­ble of com­plet­ing the race in a de­cent time.

Last month, the 40 per­sons se­lect­ed were based on past per­for­mances over the last three edi­tions of the T&T marathon. The men se­lect­ed were those who cov­ered the dis­tance in un­der three hours and 45 min­utes and un­der four hours and 30 min­utes for the women, so this is the gauge for any in­ter­est­ed per­sons.

It is the sec­ond straight year, that TTIM has been host­ing vir­tu­al races (VR) and on com­ple­tion par­tic­i­pants, who have been run­ning their cho­sen dis­tances over three weeks, will re­ceive the 2022 40th Edi­tion VR race medal or if they com­plete more than one, they will re­ceive all three.

The rule states that each race must be run all at one time or in one go and record­ed on one tim­ing de­vice, track­ing their dis­tance cov­ered us­ing spe­cial run­ning apps and up­load their times to the TTIM’s web­site. These events are to be com­plet­ed on foot by run­ning, walk­ing or hik­ing.

Al­so be­ing con­test­ed is the half-marathon (13.1 miles) and a 3.1 mile dis­tance.