Mancao, Chisato top ICC Day 5K

Michael Mancao, left, is all smiles as he comes in first place in the men’s category, while women’s first-placer Rosemarie Chisato runs on the shore of Tank Beach toward the finish line of Run Saipan’s International Coastal Clean Up Day 5K last Saturday in Kagman. (LEIGH GASES)

Michael Mancao and Rosemarie Chisato finished first in the men’s and women’s categories of Run Saipan’s 2nd Annual International Coastal Cleanup Day 5K race.

Run Saipan held their annual ICC 5K race for the first time in Kagman with 23 runners and were blessed with beautiful weather as it wasn’t hit with a heavy downpour early Saturday morning.

The course started off on the shores of Tank Beach in Kagman and ran through a portion of Kagman, then back to Tank Beach.

Mancao, a cadet for Airport Rescue and Firefighting, came in with a time of 22:34 to top the men’s category.

Sildrey Veloria came in right after at 22:42 followed by Matt Furan at 26:18.

Mancao told Saipan Tribune, with a rainbow in the sky as a backdrop after the race, that the “course was really nice… it was beautiful weather too. The dogs were there but they weren’t chasing us.” He added that there were “two great hill workouts and the long pathway… was a really good, long stretch.”

With the first-place finish, he said he stuck with Veloria “for [the] majority of the race and then to the turnaround, that’s when we started picking up the pace, started pulling away from each other. And coming down, we had to slow down because of the terrain.”

Chisato, a barista at Paris Croissant, topped the women’s category with a time of 28:26. 

Ann Bang came in second with a time of 28:44 and Jessica Ortizo clocked in third with a time of 30:51.

Chisato said she came out to support the club and the beach day cleanup. She said that it was her “first time” running it and that she didn’t know that there was “an uphill” run, so it was “hard, but I had practice because I usually run up Suicide Cliff.”

After the race, Run Saipan president Edward Dela Cruz Jr. said that “this is an amazing event that we partner every year with Salty Skin Pacific to promote Coastal Resources Management’s International Coastal Cleanup.”

With regards to the beach cleanup, he said “this is really special to me because we can do a beach cleanup any day of the week but the reason why we come out once a year is to help collect data for all the scientific journalists and for CRM (Coastal Resources Management)… This is doing our part with the rest of the world to fight pollution in our marine aquatic life. At the same time, also, this is special because this is our first 5K in Kagman. We’re going to do more 5Ks here in the future. So, thank you to all the organizers here in Kagman for bringing out Kagman’s beauty and bringing some event life down here.”

He then thanked their sponsors, namely Latte Built, Salty Skin Pacific, MARPAC, and Java Joe’s, “and thank you to the people of Kagman, you guys are all amazing today.”

Right after the 5K, 29 adults and 11 children collected 113 lbs of trash from the shores of Tank Beach for the annual International Coastal Cleanup Day.

For more information on this event or other Run Saipan events, email runsaipan@gmail.com.