Teenage student 16-year-old Roy Kiruri joined other swimmers from all over the world including Olympic Open Water Swimmers to swim at the world renowned Guinness Book of Records Largest Open Water Swimming Race, The Midmar Mile, to raise funds for the Beyond Zero Campaign.
Beyond Zero Cammpaign is an initiative by the First Lady Margaret Kenyatta aimed at reducing the number of preventable deaths of mothers and children in the country.
This was the 42nd time the event was taking place and swimmers both young and old had met at the Midmar Dam in Howick, KwaZulu Natal in South Africa to meet a personal challenge of swimming a distance of 1.6km non-stop in a dam 11m deep and with no luxury of seeing the bottom.
Having done this before, Roy was confident for an improved finish which he did in 23 min 42 sec, 1 minute better from his last swim in 2013.There were various swimming champions from all over the world including Keri-Anne Payne from Britain who is the current World Open Water Swimming Champion who defended her title with a time of 17:34.
Roy Kiruri is on a mission to raise Ksh 1m in support of the Beyond Zero campaign and has so far raised Ksh 500,000.The second edition of the First Lady’s Half marathon slated for the 8th of March 2015 is aimed at raising Ksh600 million to buy 27 more mobile clinics. The marathon which is now open to wheel chair participants targets to bring together over 40,000 participants.
With the marathon being flagged off by the First Lady on Uhuru Highway and follow Haile Selassie, Uhuru Highway Road About – Railways Sports Club – Community – City Mortuary Round About – T-mall Round About – 21KM turning point (Langata road) – General Motors(turn-around point) – Finish.
Preparations for the Marathon are in earnest with registration ongoing at Nakumatt, Uchumi, Nairobi Sports House and Equity Bank Branches country wide at Ksh1,500 for individual participants and Kshs 100,000 for corporate participants of between five and ten individuals.
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