The 2026 edi­tion of the Bri­an Lewis-in­spired and or­gan­ised T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Gold Foun­da­tion Marathon Chal­lenge Walk for ath­letes, stepped off at 2 am on Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 18). Start­ing from Freeport in Cen­tral Trinidad, the event fea­tured over 115 walk­ers. The fact that some late reg­is­trants were un­able to par­tic­i­pate sug­gests a grow­ing in­ter­est in the cause across the coun­try.

​While this was the 12th edi­tion of the walk, it was on­ly the sixth since its break­away of sorts from the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon (TTIM). Al­though there were some dif­fer­ences of opin­ion re­gard­ing the ex­act start­ing point to en­sure the full 26.2-mile marathon dis­tance, there was no dis­agree­ment when it came to the main mo­ti­va­tion of all par­tic­i­pants–to show their sup­port for a cause that is close to the heart of all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who care about our Olympic-bound ath­letes.

​With at least four maxi-taxis re­quired to trans­port par­tic­i­pants to the start, the event's fu­ture growth seems as­sured. Peo­ple clear­ly show up for an event they can trust and a team led by Lewis that they be­lieve in; it is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that the core sup­port­ers from the ini­tial walk 12 years ago are still par­tic­i­pat­ing.

​As a par­tic­i­pant along­side my broth­er, Nigel Mark Bap­tiste, there were a lot of fan­tas­tic ex­pe­ri­ences that can be re­count­ed and that ap­plies to all par­tic­i­pants, whether they com­plet­ed 5, 10, 15,20 or all 26.2 miles, as their faces told a sto­ry of love, fun and en­joy­ment.

​A big shout out must go to the sup­port teams along the jour­ney who did yeo­man ser­vice to all walk­ers, tra­vers­ing the full length of the jour­ney as the walk­ers spread out over miles to en­sure that wa­ter and at some point, salt prunes, were pro­vid­ed. Am­bu­lance ser­vices were al­so most no­tice­able along the course.

​Much like the ex­o­dus of the Jews from Egypt, the po­lice took up sta­tions at the front and rear of the walk. How­ev­er, this left many walk­ers in the mid­dle to fend for them­selves at key in­ter­sec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Ca­roni and Curepe round­abouts. Most man­aged with­out any ma­jor prob­lems, but I must again ques­tion why po­lice costs are so high for an event that "gives back" to the coun­try. Per­haps the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the new ad­min­is­tra­tion at the Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion could im­ple­ment a pol­i­cy to sup­port such ini­tia­tives. That said, the of­fi­cers on du­ty did a car­ing job with­in their lim­i­ta­tions.

Al­though mar­ket­ed as a marathon walk, there were op­por­tu­ni­ties for any­one so de­sirous to run for as much of the jour­ney as pos­si­ble. It turned out that not many par­tic­i­pants could run for much of the jour­ney. There was one wheel­chair par­tic­i­pant, al­though the hand­cy­cle that he us­es would not be al­low­able un­der World Para Ath­let­ics (WPA) rules. This is not a rules-based event; how­ev­er, with the main fo­cus be­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion and fun. And there was a lot of fun.

The 115+ par­tic­i­pants com­prised the usu­al bunch of fun walk­ers, com­pet­i­tive walk­ers, one-time walk­ers, non-walk­ers and fun talk­ers. Many sup­port­ers joined along the jour­ney but with no medals/records pro­vid­ed, com­ple­tion was all that was at stake. Af­ter the cus­tom­ary prayer, the walk­ers were off to a prompt start in ide­al weath­er con­di­tions. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, the field broke in­to many groups, the lead­ing group, which was nev­er to splin­ter, com­pris­ing five or six walk­ers plus the para-ath­lete.

Af­ter this group, the walk­ers were stretched out based on the in­di­vid­ual abil­i­ties/ob­jec­tives – these were so­lo walk­ers spread out over about a mile plus even­tu­al­ly, with the main body of walk­ers clus­tered to­geth­er there­after. The most dan­ger­ous stretch of the walk, at that hour, is the Old South­ern Main Road be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Ca­roni, par­tic­u­lar­ly the un­lit stretch to­wards the north­ern end of the road. Through­out the jour­ney, there were very few changes in po­si­tions be­tween where walk­ers start­ed off and where they end­ed. The lead­ing walk­ers were able to com­plete the walk, av­er­ag­ing a walk­ing time of be­tween 12 and 14 min­utes per mile, which are ex­cel­lent times for non-pro­fes­sion­al walk­ers.

Lewis and the main body of walk­ers com­plet­ed the walk in a bit un­der eight hours, which was an ex­cel­lent time con­sid­er­ing the is­sues en­coun­tered along the way, in­clud­ing some chal­lenges with the sound (mu­sic) sys­tem, which adds a par­tic­u­lar en­er­gy and dri­ve and in­di­vid­ual-spe­cif­ic health chal­lenges. The en­joy­ment with the group through the reg­u­lar horn blow­ing and the reg­u­lar "Tri­ni pi­cong" kept the mood bounc­ing and had every­one hap­py. Lewis’s sis­ter was al­so present, as she came to give full sup­port to her broth­er.

Yet again, sup­port­ers flocked to the Har­vard Club to wel­come the fin­ish­ers, with the me­dia al­so be­ing on hand at the end of the walk. Most of the walk­ers who com­plet­ed ahead of the main bunch went un­her­ald­ed and if there is one area for im­prove­ment, it could be a wel­come par­ty sit­u­at­ed at the Club to ac­knowl­edge the fin­ish­ing ef­fort of those walk­ers.

A fea­ture of this walk, which is not present in oth­er events, is the ca­ma­raderie among the walk­ers along the way. There is an air of co­op­er­a­tion among par­tic­i­pants, which is unique to this walk, pos­si­bly due to its in­her­ent­ly non­com­pet­i­tive na­ture. There is, how­ev­er, a men­tal chal­lenge that each par­tic­i­pant has to over­come, whether the full dis­tance was tra­versed or a part there­of. Ku­dos must go out to Bri­an Lewis for his per­se­ver­ance over the last 12 years, and this year es­pe­cial­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of his re­cent­ly re­vealed per­son­al health chal­lenges.

The Brunch at Har­vard con­tin­ues to be a mas­sive suc­cess with a num­ber of well-re­ceived choic­es in terms of food del­i­ca­cies mar­shalled by San­dra Lewis. This is a con­cept that a lot of or­gan­is­ers could adopt in a few days.

The TTIM and its se­ries of events have re­cent­ly been ad­ver­tised as tak­ing place be­tween April and May 2026 un­der the um­brel­la of Bafas­port. Bafas­port has emerged on the scene in re­cent years and while their or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills are ev­i­dent to all, a de­tract­ing fea­ture of their role is the USD na­ture of all pay­ments made, which has been neg­a­tive­ly re­marked up­on by more lo­cal run­ners.

My un­der­stand­ing is that it was not the ex­pec­ta­tion of some School par­ents at a re­cent event, for ex­am­ple, that their cred­it cards would be deb­it­ed in USD when pay­ing to par­tic­i­pate in their chil­dren's school's 5k event.

If you are avail­able and you have the USD to spare, all are en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in the 10km half-marathon and/or marathon. But hope­ful­ly the BAFA team can learn from Sun­day and im­prove where nec­es­sary.