Athletics Association of Malawi (AAM) has urged local athletes to utilise the Standard Bank Be More Race to prepare for upcoming athletics tournaments.

The Be More Race is scheduled for Saturday in Lilongwe and AAM is expected to send athletes to the African Championship in Morocco and IAAF championship in Qatar this year.

AAM general secretary Frank Chitembeya said their association is set to benefit from the competition.

“We have local competitions in the country and international ones where we are supposed to send athletes. Be More Race also creates an opportunity for us to identify talent for our competitions like cross country. This year they have also introduced the relay races where athletes stand a chance to run in teams and win some cash prizes,” Chitembeya said.

Be More Races have been run in each of all the country's three regions since 2017, but the bank cancelled the Blantyre race last month.

The competition has also been used to raise resources for the Girl Mentorship Programme in partnership with Unicef.

The winner will get K1.7 million, runner-up K1 million and K600,000 for a third-place finish.

The relay race will involve six teams of four athletes. The winning team will get K300,000, the second-placed K200, 000 and third prize is K100,000.

The 21km distance runners will start at 06:00am followed by 10km runners at 06:10am and 06:20am for runners covering the 5km distance.