To encourage people to go outdoors, the 13 chapters of International Jie-ren Association in central Taiwan will jointly host the 5th Jie-ren Cup National Marathon Relay at Tunghai University on July 15, 2012. At the press conference held at the Briefing Room on the 9th Floor of Taichung City Hall today (May 18), Tsai Bing-kun (蔡炳坤), Deputy Mayor of Taichung City, encouraged people to sign up for the race; he hoped that there will be more than 250 teams to take part in the realy, overtaking the number of last year.

On behalf of Mayor Jason Hu, who was abroad at the moment, Deputy Mayor Tsai welcomed Jie-ren Association to hold the press conference at Taichung City Hall. He said that although Mayor Hu was in a foreign country, he paid much attention to the press conference of today and demanded it be held at this Briefing Room, the most important venue in Taichung City Hall, where weekly municipal meetings are held.

Deputy Mayor Tsai said that the theme of marathon relay last year was running for health and happiness while there are three themes for this year. The first is still “running for health and happiness”. The second is running for teamwork, the most prominent feature of the this Marathon in that 8 out of the10 members of each team have to relay for a total distance of 42 km, meaning everyone has to run his/her part well for 5.25 km. The third is the stress on gender equality, the most special theme in the world, in that the 4th ruuner of each team must be female, symbolic of the promotion of gender equality.

Deputy Mayor Tsai hoped that to surpass the number of particpipants last year, there will be at least 250 teams (2,500 runners) signing up for the race this year, so that the total participants can easily reach over 5000 people when the dependents of the runners are added in. He also thanked Tunghai University for providing such a beautiful campus for the marathon relay.

The host unit said the 5th Jie-ren Cup National Marathon Relay will be classified into six groups, including communitygroup, college group, senior high school group, junior high school group, company and government agency group, and Jie-ren’s friend group. Registration begins from now until June 8. Xu Ji-sheng (許績勝), the marathon record holder in Taiwan, continues to act as spokesperson for the event. For more information or to registration, please visit www.jierencup.tw or Facebook [Jie-rencup].