On March 1, the 5 and 10 km races within the sports program of the country's most mass marathon were held at the Demino Central Sports Complex. About a thousand participants from different regions of Russia came to the start: Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Vologda, Bryansk, Lipetsk, Belgorod, Tver, Vladimir, Arkhangelsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Republic of Karelia.


The first to take to the track were juniors on a distance of 5 km. This year's innovation is a separate start of men's and women's races with an interval of 20 minutes.



Three athletes - Vyacheslav Smirnov from Rybinsk, Alexander Popov from the Lipetsk region and Konstantin Starostin from Nizhny Novgorod - crossed the finish line of the junior race at the same time. The winner in the three was determined by the photo-finish, the order of places was decided by hundredths of a second.


- I rode at my own pace, perfectly prepared skis helped, - Vyacheslav Smirnov, a pupil of sports school No. 4 of Rybinsk, briefly told about his success.


The leader of the junior women's race was Evgenia Sidorova from Petrozavodsk, who overcame the distance in 12 minutes and 28 seconds.


- It is not the first time I take part in the marathon. I tried hard from the start, and then went at my own pace, - said the winner of the junior race.



Maria Eppinger from Yaroslavl came to the finish line with a gap of eight seconds from the leader, third was Liya Titova from the Moscow region with a result of 12 minutes and 40 seconds.


More than 600 participants came to the start of the 10-kilometer race. The first to cross the finish line was Odyssey Bogachev from Yaroslavl, his