To ensure that marathon is more than just advocating healthy life, around 10 kids suffering from cancer ran to create awareness about the disease. The fifth edition of Mumbai Ultra - 12 hour that was conducted on Wednesday, saw kids from Tata Memorial Centre participating for a few minutes. "We organise the run purely to create awareness about health. Since we are not commercial and do not charge anything, some marathoners wanted to give money. We thought which other hospital can be better than Tata Memorial Centre where children are treated. So, we asked them to give the money directly to the hospital," said Navin Hegde, a volunteer of Mumbai Runners Group that organised the event. The marathoners gave over Rs 3 lakh. The marathoners this time had decided to have an 80-year-old as its face. "Besides him, we even had a N Chandrasekaran of Tata group run two loops, mother of Milind Soman as a senior citizen also ran the race," said Shahina Lalani, a volunteer. The 5 am to 5 pm marathon was from Shivaji Park-Worli Sea Face-Mela restaurant and back. "We had a tough time managing her as she was excited and would run in any direction she felt like," said Dr. Shripad Banavali, director of academics and pediatrics oncology department at the TMC of five-year-old Pragati Honparkhe, who was one of the participants. A resident of Nagpur, she is in Mumbai for blood cancer treatment. Banavali added, "The idea is to create awareness. In case of kids it is curable provided it is detected and diagnosed early and treated appropriately." Vijeta Vaishnav, another cancer patient who participated in the run, said, "This is the first time we participated in the event. We ran for 20 minutes."

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