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!