ATM 500 - Day 6: Office Girls On The run steal the limelight

Day 6 brought another 12 teams to the finish of the inaugural virtual ATM 500 Team Challenge. One team in particular caught the attention: Team ‘Office Girls On The Run’ from Philippines. An all-ladies team who completed their 500k journey in an amazing time of 45:38:28, or an average speed of 10.96 km/h..

Of course let it be clear that the ‘Speedster List’ is just a gimmick. Teams who finished the ATM 500 on the first couple of days were obviously more focused on distance than on running pace. Nevertheless, it is a striking effort from this Filipino quartet consisting of Seannah Swift, Rose Russell, Nhea Barcena and Edna Agoo. They clearly had a dedicated strategy for this 500k challenge, and broke it up in six relatively short stints each per day. The longest stint was delivered by Barcena on day 1: 38 km in a time of 3:54, already indicating a solid pace. The rest of the week clearly did not tire her too much - maybe it was quiet in the office during the days - because on Saturday she recorded a stunning 15 km in 59 minutes 23 minutes! They were all flying on their last day, reportedly motivated to break the time of Sherpa’s Angels. Agoo did 32K in 2:44, Russell did 20K in 1:51:59 and Swift a 26K in 2:14:50! We certainly hope to see them back soon on the trails of the Asia Trail Master Championship!

2015 ATM Champion Arief Wismoyono led his Bandrex Bajigur team from Bandung in West Java home on Saturday as well. Wismoyono showed great form this week with fast times, such as 83K in 8:12:41 on Day 1 and a very fast 5k in 20:20 on day 3. It is great to see that Wismoyono still has that kind of speed in his legs, after two years were exactly that key element of elite running seemed to have gone missing. His protege in Bandung, Yusuf Aprian took the team’s lion share with 153km and Alan Maulana also proved his running velocity with 95K in 9:41:27. Novita Wulandari did great in completing 125k in a time of 20:53:39.

Over in the Davao area of Mindanao, the first of five Vertical 2 Sky teams reached the finish, and ironically it was “team five”. It’s the team led by Manolyn Mamugay, multiple race winner in her home region. Marjones Abugan, Marvin Concubierta and Henry Seron Jr flanked her for the past six days.

Also the Borneo Running Team, Team BisaKol, The Expandable Runners, Team Pace Siput Runners and Team AyuLizanCicaWeda were great finishers on Saturday.

The Borocay Spartans from Philippines, ASIA 2 from Thailand, TSRT from Brunei and Lari2ID from Indonesia all showed some quick times of their team’s respective members during the week. Those teams also completed their challenge now.