The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
IT will be prizes galore at the inaugural POSB Fun Run to be held in Bulawayo this morning where close to 2 000 are expected to take to the road.
Registration for the three races was free and closed yesterday afternoon with over 1 000 athletes having registered. Over 300 POSB members of staff are also participating. The races on offer are the five kilometres, 10km as well as 15km, with all of them starting and ending at Bulawayo Athletic Club.
Monetary prizes are only for the 15km main race where the top prize for the open section Under-40 is $750, second place carries $500 and $200 is on offer for the athlete in third place.
For the veterans, which is those aged 40 to 49, the winner will pocket $150 while $100 the runner up has $100 in store for them, with the same prizes for the masters, grand masters and wheelchair categories. For the other races, the prizes are in the form of POSB hampers and merchandise.
POSB marketing manager, Lawrence Kupika said the Fun Run was their way of ensuring that their staff members as well as their families enjoy healthy lifestyles and it also gives them an opportunity to interact with the community in which they operate from.
While it is the first time that POSB are having the Fun Run in Bulawayo, they held a similar event in Harare last year whose starting point was the Reserve Bank Sports Club which was well attended.
“In coming up with the idea of a Fun Run, we looked at mainly two things, in this particular week we have been celebrating what we call Wellness Week in the bank which is a week where we educate and encourage our staff to be cognizant of health and wellness related issues. As a follow up to what we did last year, we then thought of also involving the community in which we operate,’’ Kupika said.
He expressed POSB’s desire to grow the Fun Run with the bank having partnered with the Bulawayo Athletics Board. The Manuel Mpofu led Bab are taking care of the technical side of things with POSB coming in as sponsors.
There will be other activities at BAC like Zumba, Tug-Of-War and jumping castles for children. — @Mdawini_29
