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

In follow-up to our earlier announcement on 16 March, the Asia Trail Master team has now decided to update and amend the regulations for both the 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship and the Grandmaster Quest. Even though Dalat Ultra Trail in Vietnam is giving us a glimmer of hope for a return to some kind of normalcy, the fact is that in most Asian countries the corona pandemic is still ongoing with country borders closed and mass sports and entertainment events prohibited. With the exception of Ijen Trail in East Java, Indonesia, which will announce its decision mid-June, all events scheduled for June, July and August have either been cancelled or postponed to later in the year. After Dalat Ultra Trail, which will be held on 20 June exclusively with runners based in Vietnam, we are again looking at an event hiatus of at least three months until the Vietnam Mountain Marathon on 19 September.

It is not all gloom and doom, though. Counting the events on the calendar starting with VMM, we are still looking at 15/16 points races - depending on what happens with Ijen Trail. Of course, there is no guarantee all those events will take place, but now we are talking four months out. Looking back four months, Wuhan had only just gone into lockdown. Since then, the corona curve reached its global peak and also already started its decline in most countries - most importantly for us including in Asia. Let’s hope that in four months from today, the pandemic is over, the infection rate is under control to the extent borders can re-open and sports events can again take place. Under which conditions events will take place is another matter that may vary from country to country, but of the essence is first that they can take place again.

In the current circumstances it is no longer opportune, however, to demand from elite runners that they perform at their best in minimum five races and the ATM Final in order to have a chance to become Asia Trail Master champion. While a few contenders - with hindsight - have been wise to run one or two of the three points races that took place before the lockdowns, others simply didn’t have the chance to fulfil their ambitions as major early season events such as The 9 Dragons, Cordillera Mountain Ultra and (at first) Dalat Ultra Trail very quickly ran into trouble or got cancelled.

As such, the following decisions have been made for the continuation of the 2020 ATM Championship:

• Five-best-count system becomes a three-best-count system, plus one (3+1)

• The ‘one’ in ‘3+1’ stands for the ATM Final: Borneo TMBT Ultra 100 on 19 December 2020. While TMBT can be a runner’s third race, it will be important to run it for anyone who wants to become 2020 Champion because…

• … In order to boost mainstream media and sponsor appeal, ATM Championship contenders are expected to turn up for the final direct shoot-out of the season in and around Kota Kinabalu - Borneo TMBT Ultra 100 - or face a points penalty of 300 points.

  • E.g. if runner A completes three or more races but doesn’t attend the ATM Final race, his total points tally will be reduced by 300 points. if runner B does two races and goes to the ATM Final, he scores points as usual as TMBT is his 3rd race and it’s the Final

• In order to score more championship points in the ATM Final, you must have completed at least two prior ATM points races during the season (same rule as in 2019, to avoid tactical manoeuvring between contenders, e.g. by bringing to the race international stars such as Pau Capell or Killian Jornet to take points away from a championship rival)

• The “one-must-be-SuperTrail rule” is waived for 2020 —> no penalty points if you do not run a SuperTrail race this year

• The 50-bonus points rule for a 100 miles+ finish, SuperTrail race finish and Abroad Bonus is kept as always

Regarding the Grandmaster Quest, we are extending the ‘time freeze’ by four months until September as well. That means every runner who has already started his personal Grandmaster challenge now has six months more time to achieve the first star ( = 2,5 years since the first completed race).

As we wait for some proper trail running action in Dalat next month, we continue to support initiatives such as the ATM 500 - Run Asia Virtual Race by Sportlicious Malaysia, which will begin on 8 June. You can register as teams of four and stay motivated to keep the training up.

Please also remember you can subscribe to our website news articles easily (see ‘subscribe via email’ below) and stay tuned to our ‘Tale of the Trail’ video talk shows every two weeks.

Episode 3 of our bimonthly video talk show The Tale of the Trail will be broadcast tonight, Friday, 29 May, at 19:00 Hong Kong time (20:00 Korea; 18:00 Thailand). The episode is titled “Ending the Waiting Game’, referring to the long-awaited amendments to the regulations for the 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship and the Grandmaster Quest. Our reigning champions John Ellis and Veronika Vadovicova will be on the show, as well as Jey Jang from South Korea to give us an update on Korea 50K. We will find out what is going on in Thailand during these difficult months and Amy Khor will be interviewing Alex Ang. In cooperation with Mark TWT there will be a feature on Sabah’s trail queen Jassica Lintanga, aka Jess Boubie, and finally there will be a chat with out Mystery Guest of this episode Job Tanapong.

The Tale of the Trail will be shown on the Asia Trail Master pages of both facebook and YouTube as well as here on the website.

You can now rewatch the edited version of Episode 2 of the Tale of the Trail, broadcast live on our Facebook page on Friday, 15 May. 'A Glimmer of Hope’ focused of course on Dalat Ultra Trail and Korea 50K - the first two events on the current ATM race calendar - with Samie Vu and Julie Vo on the show. Then, we looked ahead to August already together with Amy Khor and the event directors of Borneo TMBT Ultra in Malaysia and Ijen Trail in Indonesia. To top it off, there is a chat with last year’s MMTF victor Kristian Joergensen and with Isaac Yuen Wan Ho, a protagonist in the 2016-2017 seasons and the ‘Mystery Guest’ of this episode.

Main takeaways:

• Dalat Ultra Trail preparation continues, but no concrete news yet on the opening of Vietnam’s country border yet. Limited last-minute registrations will be possible.

• Julie Vo recommends a number of delicacies for first-timers to Dalat, such as the Dalat Hot Pot and the Vietnamese Pizza. A condensed milk coffee should be the start of your day.

• Claus Pedersen, event director of Borneo TMBT Ultra, announces the postponement of the event to 19/20 December 2020 to become the season’s Asia Trail Master Final

• Alfan Impriadi says that the decision on Ijen Trail, scheduled for 15/16 August, will be made mid-June

• Kristian Joergensen is doing hill repeats in flat Copenhagen to keep in shape for a potential late-season attack on the ATM Championship title

• Isaac Yuen Wan Ho has reverted to open water swimming in these corona times, but eyes a return to trail running in the latter part of the year

• Amended regulations for the 2020 ATM Championship and the Grandmaster Quest will be announced before the end of May

Episode 2 of our new bi-monthly video talk show ‘The Tale of the Trail’ has been scheduled for Friday, 15 May at 18:00 Hong Kong time. Labeled “A Glimmer of Hope”, the show will continue on the good vibes from Vietnam and South Korea two weeks ago and hope to get more updates on, especially, the logistical front of both scheduled ATM Championship events Dalat Ultra Trail and Korea 50K. All events in July have already been cancelled, so we will toe the water with the event management of Ijen Trail in East Java, Indonesia, and the big Borneo TMBT Ultra in Sabah, Malaysia. Both are on the programme for the second half of August. Furthermore, we will have a chat with Kristian Joergensen, who only very recently managed to get out of his resident city of Manila in the Philippines and flew back to his native Denmark. And last but not least, we have our mystery guest.

Episode 2 of The Tale of the Trail will be live on our Facebook page on Friday at 18:00 Hong Kong time. The edited recording can also be watched later on YouTube and our website.

Now you can rewatch episode 1 of our facebook live show ‘Tale of the Trail’ here on the website. This episode was dubbed “The State of Play” , featuring the event management of the next five events on the amended 2020 Asia Trail Master calendar.

Or on our YouTube page:

The 2020 season continues to be seriously affected by the corona crisis. In the last two weeks, three more ATM Championship events have followed the 9 Dragons Ultra into announcing the outright cancellation of this year’s edition: Puncak Tanawan Mountain Ultra in Philippines, Echigo Country Trail in Japan and last Sunday even Mantra Summits Challenge in Indonesia. At present, the re-launch of the season has moved back to late June and Dalat Ultra Trail in Vietnam. Now here’s some good news: both the event management in Dalat and the following week’s Korea 50K remain upbeat about the chances of their events going ahead as scheduled. The covid 19 cases have been dropping or the situation is so far under control in these two countries that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

However, even if they can go ahead as scheduled, under which conditions?

Plenty of questions and on 1 May we will aim to get a few answers from the event teams themselves. Tune in to our ATM facebook page at 18:00 Hong Kong time (check your corresponding time in your personal country of residence). Kris will be talking to the people behind Dalat Ultra Trail, Korea 50K, Cordillera Mountain Ultra, MUSPO 50 and last but not least Cameron Ultra.

In addition, we will also be briefly putting the spotlight on a mystery guest, a person with pedigree in the Asia Trail Master history to find out how he or she is doing. Before the show, social media followers will have the opportunity to guess the identity of the mystery guest. More on this by the end of this work week.

The global corona pandemic is causing serious problems for society as a whole and certainly for the event industry as well. Over the past weeks, several points races for the Asia Trail Master Championship and Grandmaster Quest have been postponed or even cancelled all together. Initially, everyone had hoped that the worst would be over by mid-April, but while this may be the case for China, the rest of the world is increasingly affected now. Following the postponements of Korea 50K and the Mount Apo Sky Race, the first points race on the ATM schedule is now the Monkeys Trail on Koh Samui island in Thailand on 16/17 May - which seems an eternity away. The 2021 Candidate Race on Bohol in the Philippines, Alicia Ultra, has also been postponed for the second time already to an as yet undefined new date.

Assuming the corona virus will, eventually, be conquered in the next weeks, we will be looking at a very dense race calendar in the second half of 2020. This is not new for ATM - it has always been busier from July to December than in the first semester. Of course, a number of the postponed events now also feature in Q3 or Q4 and - unfortunately - a few organisers are bound by local authorities’ demands. As such, we will have weekends with two or even three ATM points races. This will not help their media exposure as everyone knows it is much more intense and absorbing to watch one movie instead of two or three movies at the same time.

Nevertheless, we have decided that all postponed races on our calendar remain points races for the 2020 ATM Championship and Grandmaster Quest no matter what. Event organisers have forwarded registrations to the new event dates and we do not wish to punish any runner who had planned to score his or her points in those races.

In addition, for the Grandmaster Quest, we will be implementing a two-months-freeze of the time requirement to reach the first level, a.k.a. the Grandmaster 1-star level. According to the regulation, runners have a two-year-timeframe in which they need to obtain 6 points to become an Asia Trail Grandmaster. The two-months ‘bonus’ is of course only valid for runners who already today have completed minimum 1 Grandmaster race distance.

There are no changes as regards to the regulations of the 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship, given only one race got cancelled (9 Dragons Ultra) and the Lantau 70 has come in as the Hong Kong SuperTrail on 31 October. Looking at the calendar today, it should still be more than feasible to compete and score results in five races before the end of the season in mid-December.

The updated race calendar in PDF is downloadable here. The basic event details and links to the official event websites are as usual available via our dropdown menu on this website.

In a nutshell: the event changes

• The 9 Dragons Ultra (Hong Kong) : cancelled

• Cordillera Mountain Ultra (Philippines): postponed to 28 June

• Dalat Ultra Trail (Vietnam): postponed to 20 June

• Ultimate Tsaigu (China): postponed to 24 October

• Mount Apo Sky Race (Philippines): postponed to a date to be confirmed

• Korea 50K (South Korea): postponed to 27 June

• Vietnam Jungle Marathon (Vietnam): postponed to 24 October

The 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship Final

Keen observers may have seen for a while that on our event calendar there is a special ‘ATM Final’ event foreseen on Saturday, 19 December 2020. Sadly, the corona situation has also had an unexpected impact here, and we are currently still unable to confirm the race venue and details. We hope to do so by the end of this month.

At present, the final confirmed race on the 2020 ATM Calendar is Japan’s SuperTrail, the Izu Trail Journey, which already hosted the ATM Final twice before in 2017 and 2018. Last season, the Malaysia Mountain Trail Festival took the honour, but that event has been moved forward to 5 December and renamed TNF 100 Malaysia.

Now the corona virus situation has effectively put all championship activity to a halt until the end of April (touch wood), we can take some time to take a closer and deeper look at all the points races in this year’s edition of our Championship series. Even more than last year, naturally, the emphasis lies on the second half of the season.

The postponements and cancellations of some of the early events have already affected some of the elites’ seasonal planning. Planning will be essential even more than before, as races will follow each other very quickly in Q3 and Q4 - particularly from mid September to end October. The first quarter, Q1, has already come to a premature ending with Hisashi Kitamura heading the men’s ranking and the three female race winners so far, Charlotte Taquet, Amy Sproston and Fredelyn Alberto sharing the women’s lead.

You can now print out and download the race overview in PDF format. The table also points out which race categories of each event offer ATM Championship points.

As always, each race of 70 kilometres or longer is also valid for a Grandmaster Quest point.

As every year, we take a moment to highlight the National & Regional ATM Champions in some of the key countries in which points races take place. The Asian runners who scored most points in the 2019 ATM Championship compared to their own compatriots. Some names are a given due their protagonist status in the overall ATM Championship, but other names are lesser known and also deserve a little credit! Here’s the list and a big congratulations to them!

In the context of the opening of the new Asia Trail Master Championship season at Tahura Trail in Bandung, William Cheang talked to ATM founder and still general manager Kris about the past four years, as well as the new 2019 season and the road ahead. How did ATM come about? What has been accomplished? Find out about the Grandmaster Quest for all runners, and what are the new developments in ATM this year?

The interview was split up in two parts with the first part more backwards-looking, and the second part forward-looking.

Asia Trail Master End-of-Year Poll: Choose the 'Runner of the Year', 'Event of the Year' , 'Race Director of the Year', 'Favourite trail section of the Year' and more!

As we have come to the end of another season, the fourth in ATM history, we like to get your feedback on all aspects of Asia Trail Master and Asian trail running. And of course, we like to hear from you as well who you see as the best runner or ATM event of the 2018 season. We are also interested in the most popular brands in Asian trail running, and who are the most popular - not necessarily the fastest - runners on the tour.

Participants in the poll who share their email address with us make a chance of winning a free race entry of choice for an ATM-promoted event in 2019. 

If instead you like to stay anonymous, no problem, because anonymous is the default setting. 

Thank you very much for your time.

LINK to the POLL