Sustainable tourism has become part of the general desire of Indonesia’s tourism development. The industry continuously seeks ways or avenues where sustainable tourism principles and therefore practices can be adopted in hopes to achieve the desired outcomes of sustainable tourism. One of the ways of looking for new avenues that can adopt sustainable practices is to look at the emerging sectors of tourism. An interesting lane of tourism that can do this is sports tourism. Sports tourism relationship with sustainable tourism has been studied prior with promising potential. This study explores the sustainability efforts around marathon events by the organizers added with the participants’ point of view. For the research, this study will take the case study format focusing on Pocari Run. It puts forward the question whether event organizers are willing to implement sustainable tourism practices in their events, how sustainable tourism practices can be used as a tool for marathon events success, and how it is impacting the participants. The methodology used in this research is a qualitative method, extracting insights from informants through in-depth interview directed toward the Pocari Run Organizers and focus group discussion directed at participants of Pocari Run in 2022, with the addition of academics. The study found while the organizers have done several efforts of sustainable tourism principles and practices with minimum obstacles, these efforts have varying effect on the participants’ enjoyment. Sustainable tourism practices such as involving the local community can add to the attractiveness of a marathon event; therefore, it can attract more participants. Additionally, the participants do believe sustainable tourism principles and practices are important in marathon events to maintain good relationships with the marathons’ stakeholders in order for the organizers to be able to hold these marathons without problems. Attracting more participants and having a win-win situation are critical success factors on marathon events. The implication of this study is that marathon organizers need to keep up with their sustainable tourism marathon principles as it can add to the success of marathon events.