On Day 2 of the ATM 500 - Run Asia, Run Virtual team challenge expectations were exceeded again as no fewer than 13 teams completed the full distance on Tuesday, in another show of dedication, enthusiasm and sheer health in these difficult times. We cannot look past it, yesterday Rie Sugaya was the quickest as only woman in her Team BSK Marina Loopers, and today the Hong Kong’s Trail Girls on Fire clocked the fastest time of all finishing teams ! Our reigning Asia Trail Master Champion Veronika Vadovicova is obviously inspiring a lot of women with her new ‘Asia Trail Girls’ project, launched two weeks ago in her new home Hong Kong. The Slovakian herself was in excellent shape the past two days, too. Today she ran a 3:30 marathon on the back of a 7:27 ultra of 76km in very wet conditions yesterday! Estzer Csillag, whom we know from last year’s appearance and victory in the Magnificent Merapoh Trail in Malaysia, was equally impressive in doing 117 km in a time of 12 hours 13 minutes spread over two days. Nikki Han clocked 120 km in 13:07 and ultra distance specialist Habiba Benahmed took the team’s largest share of 142km and did it in 16:28! A total time for the team of 52:49:39 or an average speed of 9.46 km/h. Very few teams will break that time in the next 12 days….

On our leaderboard of the day we see the OCR Pilipinas II Team in second place with a total time of 58:16:48. The team was pushed forward by a very active and resilient Kyle Antolin, who took the lion’s share of 178 km and with quick legs, too! In fact, the second OCR Pilipinas Team required less time to complete the 500km than the number one team featuring 2016 ATM Champion Manolito Divina -nice seeing him back in action- and Sandi Menchi, a winner of 5 ATM races during her running career.

There were more finishers in the Philippines today. Team Heal As One Runners flew a bit under the radar as the four team members do not immediately ring a bell on the ATM circuit. Ha Ro, Han Lei, Doc Roman and Frankie Lobino: congratulations!

Team Mace and Team Vitargo PH also concluded their ATM 500 Challenge, making it five filipino squads in total. No other country does better. And it’s not like SIngapore, Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand are not trying! The BSK Underdogs (Singapore) and the MKRC Boleh! teams basically only had to a cool down after their 400+K runs on Monday. In Thailand, Team THAI - notably also with three women - and Team Asia I reached the virtual finish line in great style. The first team contains the well-known names of Cartoon Wipawee, Grandmasters Montha Suntornwit and Wasing Monghkolmalee, and Mum Kanlaya. The second team Asia I is a happy introduction to four new faces as well: Kim, Nok, Al and Seung.

Over in Indonesia, Team Arjuno led by in-form Bali-based German Thimo Kilberth and the promising young talent of Christin Mutia came home in a strong time of 58:35:17. That’s marginally slower than OCR Pilipinas 2 for fourth place on the results board. The team also has Akhmad Nizar and Mikha Muliawan in its ranks. Another Indonesian squad, Team Ba-Tam Ultra Runners, showed that yesterday’s 7th place on the leaderboard was no coincidence. Santih Gunawan, Fifi Bonefacia, Hui Tjen, Sansan Sanjawan ran the required additional 135km today to finish in a time 71:52:49.

Team Challenger from Malaysia with ATM regulars Mohamed Affindi, Jeffrey Budin, Sugeng Asianto and Izzah Hazirah succeeded as well today.

In terms of running speed, interestingly enough we now have Team Uglow Asia I setting the fastest pace! That’s another team based in Hong Kong featuring Elsa Jean de Dieu, Paul Fornier, Bryan Crane and Guillaume Perrot. With an AVS of 11.25 km/h they perform marginally quicker than Sherpa’s Angels with 11.05 km/h. At present, the team is “only” at the km 327 mark, though, while the team built around Alessandro Sherpa and John Ellis is at km 378. Another new appearance in this list of teams who have completed more than 250 km is Tokyo Nomad. That’s a quartet led by the famous Tomohiro Mizukoshi. They have been running around Japan’s capital city with an average speed of 10.75 km/h over 315 km.

Current Results Board ATM 500

Full team overview via the Google Page summary

The all-ladies quartet set the trails in Hong Kong on fire over the past two days!

Team THAI from Thailand

Team Asia I from Thailand

Malaysia’s Team MKRC Boleh! ran home after clocking 400k already yesterday

Team OCR Pilipinas II from Philippines

Team OCR Pilipinas I from Philippines

Team Ba Tam Ultra Runners

Team Arjuno from Indonesia

Team Vitargo PH from Philippines

Team Mace from Philippines

Team BSK Underdogs from Singapore

They had kind of announced it beforehand and they put their money where they mouths were: Singapore’s BSK Marina Loopers completed the inaugural ATM 500 Team Run Challenge as first of nearly 250 registered teams of four runners each. A few hours later it also turned out to be the only team to accomplish this amazing feat on a swelteringly hot day in the city. Rie Sugaya, Philippe Daniel, Yannick Duppich and Vincent Casanova delivered an outstanding ultrarunning performance and each completed an equal share of 125 km in less than 16 hours. In fact, the lady in the house, Japan’s Rie Sugaya, proved quickest in 13:34:08!

In the afternoon, reports were coming in of a few more teams with ambition to fulfill the 500k requirement by 10 pm. Team MKRC Boleh! in Kuala Lumpur, for instance, with seasoned runners Stephen Dundon, Chris Koelma, Thibault Bertrand and Jenny Holloway. Also the Filipino squad led by Neo Gentoleo - Vitargo - , Indonesia’s Team Arjuno with Thimo Kilberth (who climbed and descended Mt Batur along his way!) and Malaysia’s Team Challenger with Mohamed Affindi looked strong. Eventually they all got stuck around 420-400 KM. At cut-off time, it was suddenly another Singaporean Team that came closest to the 500k mark: the BSK Underdogs! The team consisting of Paulina Svoboda, Jerome Besnaud, Yan Moreno and Bernabe Sanchez ran 448 km! That means they only need a 15K “cool down” each to finish the ATM 500 tomorrow.

The first edition of ATM 500, dubbed “Run Asia, Run Virtual’ , is a creation by Sportlicious Malaysia in Penang and Asia Trail Master. Teams of four runners, of which one must be a woman, are required to complete a distance of 500 km in 14 days. Each day has maximum 18 running hours, subject to local regulations concerning the covid 19 crisis. After little more than a week of promotion, a shocking number of nearly 1000 people and 250 teams signed up for the challenge.

The ‘virtual’ event had not been designed as a pure race, but instead lays emphasis on the mass-participation aspect. The corona situation has led to a wide range of different measures set up by country governments, so that elites in a couple of places are seriously restricted in their options to compete for any potential top result. Nevertheless, we noted some outstanding performances on day 1.

The reigning women’s ATM Champion Veronika Vadovicova ran her 76K share of her “Trail Girls on Fire” team in a time of 7h27. That’s on a day with lots of rain and even a thunderstorm at the get-go early in the morning. Her teammates were clearly motivated to give it their best shot, too. Estzer Csillag - winner of TMMT 2019 - ran 8h07’ for 75K, Nikki Han did 78K in 8h27’ and experienced miler Habiba Benahmed took the largest share of the team with 100k in a time of 11h28’. Trail Girls on Fire is indeed a women’s-only team and sits in 10th place in the day’s ranking.

There’s been many wonderful achievements by individuals today that we cannot name them all, but it does strike us that the two gender categories were very well in balance! Other than Veronika’s team mentioned above, and Rie Sugaya as fastest of the ‘winning’ team in Singapore, in Thailand we saw both Cartoon Wipawee and Montha Suntornwit putting in over 100K runs, and so did Indonesia’s Christin Mutia and Philippines’ Ann Jilian Pulanco.

Further analysis of some known names on the ATM circuit, shows us that somehow John Ellis and Alessandro Sherpa ran virtually side-by-side for 71 KM despite being in different countries unaware of each other. Both locked in great times, too: Ellis did 73km in 5h54’ and Sherpa 71km in 5h52’. Let’s also mention that 2015 ATM Champion Arief Wismoyono had a quick day with 83km in 8:12:41. Over in Philippines, Kyle Antolin also managed a sub-10 hour 100K today.

UNOFFICIAL TOP 15 RANKING AFTER DAY 1

1. BSK Marina Loopers - 500 KM

2. BSK Underdogs - 448,5 KM

3. The Challengers - 418 KM

4. Vitargo PH - 408 KM

5. Arjuno - 405 KM

6. MKRC Boleh! - 400 KM

7. Ba-Tam Ultra Runners - 365 KM

8. THAI - 356 KM

9. ASIA 1 - 339 KM

10. Trail Girls on Fire - 330 KM

11. Mace - 326, 5 KM

12. Hallasan - 313 KM

13. Heal As One Runners 303 KM

14. OCR Pilipinas 2 303 KM

18 teams have already managed more than 250 of the 500 km yesterday. Of those, Sherpa’s Angels are clearly the fastest at the moment. With an average speed of 11.13 km/h for 252 km, they are nearly 2 km/h quicker than... Trail Girls on Fire! The all-ladies team around Veronika Vadovicova is second fastest with an average speed of 9.30km/h over 330 km. In third place in this side-ranking comes Team Arjuno from Indonesia with an avs of 9.20 km.h over 405 km. Team OCR Pilipinas 2 is next with 8.79 km/h over 303 km. Next are the BSK Underdogs from Singapore with 8.66 km/h over 448 km, who thus actually as a team ran at a faster pace than the BSK Marina Loopers... but couldn't keep it up for the full 500km. In fifth is Team Hallasan from South Korea with 8.48 km/h, followed by the winning team of ATM 500, BSK Marina Loopers, with an avs of 8.43 km/h.

It was bloody hot in Singapore today

John Ellis and David Longo started out in very wet weather this morning. They did not have the ambition to complete the challenge in one day

Also Fredelyn Alberto was looking at a lot of water as she got ready in the early morning in Hong Kong

Paulina Svoboda and het BSK Underdogs have the 500K mark within reach

This Monday at 4 am, more than 900 runners from all over Asia will commence their ATM 500 Virtual Team Run. A challenge in teams of four runners with the objective of completing the distance of 500 km within a timeframe of 14 days. Created by Karen Geh and KC Tan from Sportlicious Malaysia in Penang, the concept was further fine-tuned by Asia Trail Master, which has attached its brand name to assist in the promotion and the covering of the unique event that has taken the Asian trail running community by storm over the last week. Asia Trail Master is an annual points-based championship series in trail running with 30 races a year in 14 to 15 Asian countries.

For the upcoming Virtual Team Run, teams of four must include at least one woman and each team member is required to run minimum 75 km over the two-week-period. Each day by 10:30 pm, the team captains are required to send in their team's performance for validation. Due to nighttime curfews in several Asian cities or countries, the regulation says that valid runs must be done between 4 am and 10 pm. The organisers emphasize strongly that they do not want any runner to break local covid-19 regulations. Upon registration, teams could choose their own team name, posters with an event overlay were produced and went viral on social media. The snowball effect it triggered left even the organisers astonished.

“We had no idea this initiative would lead to such a continent-wide enthusiasm and it has caused an enormous amount of overtime work,” laughs Kris Van de Velde, founder and general manager of the Asia Trail Master Championship series. “It proves how much runners miss the events that have all been postponed or cancelled due to the covid 19 pandemic. The core idea of ATM 500 is to stimulate people to keep exercising and remain conscious of their physical and mental health, after we heard of several runners-in-lockdown letting themselves go and engaging in tv binge watching with all its tricky side-habits of consuming too many unhealthy snacks and beers. That is also the reason why the focus of our team challenge is on distance rather than on speed. People will motivate each other every day to move and increase the total mileage of the team. Of course, elite-level runners need to nurture their competitive spirit as well in these months without racing, and for sure some ‘elite teams’ will aim to win by completing the 500k as a team in just a couple of days."

Plenty of Asia’s finest have indeed signed up for the special occasion, including reigning Asia Trail Master champions John Ellis and Veronika Vadovicova, as well as former champions Alessandro Sherpa, Manolito Divina and Arief Wismoyono. Other household names we find in team rosters, are a.o. Jeff Campbell, Yuri Norimatsu, Fredelyn Alberto, Estzer Csillag, Quang Tran, Kristian Joergensen, Rie Sugaya, Milton Amat, Tomohiro Mizukoshi and Mohamed Affindi.

Not all elites will be gunning for victory, though. Milton Amat, winner of Borneo TMBT Ultra 100 and Mantra Summits Challenge and the best Sabahan runner in the ATM Championship for the last two years, loves the general concept and will take up the 500k challenge together with his young son Rheo, his sister Egnes and uncle Lukas as a ‘family team’.

On Sunday night, 230 teams had officially entered already. Registered teams come from all over Asia and even Spain. Kalimantan (Indonesia) and Cambodia have three teams each - despite having no history in the Asia Trail Master series.

Updates on the event’s proceedings will be released on the websites and social media channels of Asia Trail Master and Sportlicious Malaysia.

As the 1st edition of the ATM 500 - Run Asia, Run Virtual, is approaching, Sportlicious Malaysia and Asia Trail Master would first of all like to thank all of you for your enthusiasm and large number of registrations so far. It is going to be an exciting two weeks starting next Monday!

While the core objective is for all teams to complete the 500km milestone in fourteen days, of course some teams and its runners also wish to compete and be the first to complete the distance. This has compelled some people to raise a red alert: in several Asian countries there is still a nighttime curfew in place. As such, some of the participants in ATM 500 are unable to put in any significant mileage during nighttime hours. Curfews vary from place to place and may even be different between various cities or regions in one and the same country.

It goes without saying that both Sportlicious Malaysia and Asia Trail Master do not want anyone to break any official covid-19 regulations of the location you are in. Our virtual competition is not worth that. Please also consider the potential (social) media backlash against endurance runners should someone not stick to these regulations.

In order to keep the competition aspect of ATM 500 as fair as possible, we will therefore also introduce and enforce a daily ‘rest time’ from 10 pm until 4 am (6 hours). Logically, this means every team can only collect kilometres from 4 am to 10 pm (18 hours) each day starting on Monday, 8 June. During the ‘rest time’ kilometers cannot be collected and we hope that teams will respect this measure in the spirit of solidarity with those who cannot run at all during the night.

The times are the same for every time zone, so just look at your own watch.

The key regulations of our competition are summarised in the image below. Team Captains are advised to doublecheck the more detailed list mentioned in the original announcement from last week. Of the essence is that captains send in their team’s daily results by 10:30 pm every day. Sportlicious will be verifying everything and produce the daily team ranking by the early mornings. A daily report will later during the day also be published on the Asia Trail Master pages.

Photo and video material by the runners and teams are always welcome!

Let’s have some fun!

Nhon Trong leads one of the Vietnam teams.

Here’s Tomohiro Mizukoshi with his team of Tokyo Nomads!

Quang Tran is heading the Vietnam Monsters!

Registrations for the upcoming first edition of the ATM 500 - Run Asia, Run Virtual by Sportlcious Malaysia are coming in on a regular basis now as teams are being formed all over Asia. The virtual endurance challenge begins next week on Monday, 8 June and ends no later than 21 June. While the core objective of the initiative is not necessarily the competition, it is great to see so many of our annual championship contenders already on the start list. We even have a team containing the ATM champions of the past two years: Alessandro Sherpa and John Ellis. They are flanked by David Longo and Chong Mei Tze under the team name “Sherpa’s Angels”. The “Smiling Assasin” team has an equally international composition with captain Michael McLean having persuaded 2020 ATM Championship co-leader Fredelyn Alberto, MMTF 2019 dominator Kristian Joergensen and 2020 Tahura Trail winner Jeff Campbell to join his squad.

Teams consist of maximum four people of which minimum one has to be female. Each runner in a team is required to run at least 75 km. Participants can choose between running on a treadmill, outdoors or indoors, road or trail. Daily results will be submitted by each team’s captain no later than 10 pm every night, and verified via Strava and the Sportlicious Malaysia Club. The first three teams that complete 500 km will be awarded, but all teams’ efforts will be acknowledged no matter they complete the virtual running challenge in five days or need the full two weeks of allocated time.

The ATM 500 - Run Asia, Run Virtual is primarily a fun challenge to keep spirits high and condition top in times when the next race is still months away - except if you live in Vietnam. Both organiser Sportlicious Malaysia and ourselves at Asia Trail Master will be reporting on a daily basis on the achievements of each team and each runner.

Online registration is very easy, just click on the button below that leads to a Google Form. Please do read the virtual race regulations first, though, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding afterwards.

A random selection of registered teams so far (all participants will be announced in the next days)