More than 10,000 people participated in a midnight marathon, presently in its eighth edition, in Bengaluru on Saturday night.
The marathon saw runners of all age groups, professional athletes and enthusiastic runners, taking part in full enthusiasm.
The event which is organised around a different theme every year has 'Run for Bengaluru' as this year's theme.
President of IT Rotary Club Bengaluru, Rajeev Unnikrishnan, said the purpose behind organising the marathon is to raise funds for building toilets, infrastructure development of schools across the city and 'Swachh Bengaluru' which is in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Clean India Mission.
"When we started thinking about how to raise funds, the first idea that came is that we should do a marathon because in Bangalore there is no full marathon that happens at all. Then we said why just have it as a normal marathon, we will do it in the midnight because that will be the world's only midnight marathon. So then that will also become unique and the other reason is that Bangalore is one place where it works 24x7. So we said, when people are working in the night, we should support them by running there and doing a lot of different things, we should make them also feel good. So that's how we started this whole activity eight years back," said Unnikrishnan.
People have raised money by participating in the marathon and the funds generated have provided free spinal and eye surgeries to the needy, scholarships for deserving youth, vocational training sponsorships and mid-day meals in schools among many other benefits.
"This is the second time I am running this midnight marathon. This is very good experience here, especially running in the night. It has its own challenge and its own fun so I enjoy running this race," said a participant, Akshay Luthra.
This is the only midnight marathon in the country and more than 60,000 runners have participated over the last seven editions and the number is increasing every year.
