Clay­ton Clarke

Tonya Nero will be seek­ing to im­prove her na­tion­al record mark of 1 hr 15 min­utes 13 sec­onds when she lines up in the ninth UWI SPEC Half Marathon which gets un­der­way at UWI Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (SPEC) in St Au­gus­tine at 6 am.

The mul­ti­ple na­tion­al record hold­er is com­pet­ing in her sec­ond UWI half marathon and warmed up for the event by win­ning the South Amer­i­can 10k Guyana leg in George­town, Guyana, last Sun­day.

The North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) cross-coun­try sil­ver medal­list said the her aim go­ing in the race was to come out vic­to­ri­ous. "My goal is to win. It will be a tac­ti­cal race as the con­di­tions here in Trinidad are usu­al­ly hot and hu­mid. I am hop­ing that with the 6 am start the weath­er will be cool."

The Wi­chi­ta Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate said she has been train­ing with her broth­ers Saldino and Mat­teus. The 23-year-old low­ered her na­tion­al half marathon mark to 1.15:13 in fin­ish­ing 27th at last month's World Cham­pi­onships in Kavar­na, Bul­gar­ia. Nero said com­pet­ing against the best run­ners in the world was a good ex­pe­ri­ence. "From the race I learnt to run my own race. I am not at the lev­el where I can go out and run with the rest. I have to stick to my plan."

She re­turned to her al­ma mater in Kansas, USA, ear­li­er this year to train. Her chances of win­ning to­mor­row were giv­en a boost with the with­draw­al of 2009 cham­pi­on Mary Akor. The Niger­ian-born Amer­i­can will not be able to ar­rive in time for the race.

An­tho­ny Har­ford of All Sport Pro­mo­tions told Trinidad Guardian that Akor asked to have her flight changed to ar­rive on Fri­day in­stead of Sat­ur­day (to­day) as orig­i­nal­ly booked: "She called and asked for the change but we could not do so in time to have her here."

An­oth­er no­table ab­sen­tee is 2008 win­ner Ali­ka Mor­gan (Guyana). Last year's win­ner Leah Kir­jen of Kenya will not be com­pet­ing as well.

An­oth­er lo­cal hope­ful, Ce­line Lestrade, is look­ing to go un­der 1:30. Lestrade added that she is hop­ing to be ful­ly re­cov­ered af­ter her Chica­go Marathon run where she clocked a per­son­al best of 3:19.

Among the men, de­fend­ing cham­pi­on George Towett has been con­firmed to com­pete as well US-based lo­cal Ron­nie Ho­lassie. Both are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive lat­er to­day.

Vet­er­an Pa­menos Bal­lan­tyne (St Vin­cent and the Grenadines) and last year's third-place fin­ish­er Cleve­land Forde of Guyana will not make the trip to Trinidad. Ac­cord­ing to All Sport, Bal­lan­tyne was se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent his coun­try at a race in Guade­loupe while Forde will com­pete for his Guyana De­fence Force team in a track meet in Guyana.

Cur­tis Cox is hop­ing to dip un­der the 1:10 bar­ri­er. "I have not done so in a long time in this year. My train­ing has been com­ing along and I was fourth in Guyana last week." Richard Jones, Matthew Ha­gley and Jules LaR­o­de are among the top lo­cals who are ex­pect­ed to bat­tle for the top prizes. The win­ners will share $135,000 in prize mon­ey while a fur­ther US$1,000 will be on of­fer for a new course record (ex­ist­ing record-men: 1:05:06.9, women: 1:12:07.6). There will be spe­cial prizes for the top uni­ver­si­ty, UWI stu­dent, UWI staff,

UWI St Au­gus­tine, First Cit­i­zen com­peti­tors. The top lo­cal ath­letes will al­so be crowned the NAAA Cham­pi­ons.

The race starts out­side UWI SPEC build­ings on St Au­gus­tine Cir­cu­lar Road and con­tin­ues up to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route up to La Re­source in D'Abadie and back down to UWI SPEC for the fin­ish. The bus route will be closed off to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic dur­ing the race. The 13.1 mile run will be elec­tron­i­cal­ly timed and is cer­ti­fied by the As­so­ci­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Marathons and Dis­tance Races (AIMS). It is al­so ac­cred­it­ed by In­ter­na­tion­al Am­a­teur Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tion (IAAF) and sanc­tioned by Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tions of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­stra­tion (NAAA).

First Cit­i­zen's Bank and the Min­istry of Sports are the ma­jor spon­sors of this year's race.

PRIZES

Open-Male/Fe­male

First US$2,000

Sec­ond US$1,000

Third US$800

Fourth US$400

Fifth US$300

Course record US$1,000

Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent /UWI Stu­dent/UWIStaff/UWi-St. Au­gus­tine/NAAA

First TT$1,500

Sec­ond TT$1,000

Third TT$500