The 100 miles began at 6 pm on Friday night, which gave runners about 90 minutes to get warmed up before nightfall. Henry Yang from Singapore, whose goal was to complete his Grandmaster Quest, arrived first at the 11km aid station. A rather usual fast start by him, which was brave given Henry DNFd in Penang Eco a few years ago. He knew that this race is much harder than it looks on paper. Eventually, Henry would overcome serious feet and blister issues to finish the 100 miles and achieve his ATM Grandmaster status! Saiful Anuar from Malaysia was also aiming to reach the Grandmaster finish, but he will have to wait a bit longer as Penang Eco did get to him and he did not finish this one.
The battle for the race victory was decided by Wilsen Singgin and Amierul Amin, as was to be expected. Rasyid Salehuddin, Tuan Hafandi Bin Tuan Ismail and Chong Teck Shuin followed and would determine the third spot on the podium. It was the very experienced Tuan Hafandi who grabbed it in the end. Up front, Singgin and Amin digested the conditions and the distance together until the final 30km, when the experience and toughness of Singgin began to prevail over the freshness of Amin - one of the 2023 season revelations in ATM. In the very tough final 10 km of the race - described as ‘sadistic’ by many - Singgin proved he still had quite a bit of juice in the tank as he ran more than 1 hour away from Amin to take his 3rd career ATM win, his first since MMTF in 2021. Not that it means much, but his finish time was 33h55’. When Singgin is in shape AND focused on a race, he is always able to deliver something special - especially on long and tough mountain trails.
Sally Yap felt in trouble, sprained her ankle and was strangely worried about the cut-off time for most of Saturday until a welcome heavy rainshower cooled her off, and she started to get some pace in the legs. At that point, however, she was somehow one-and-a-half hours behind race leader Celeste Teo, with Hong Kong-based Australian Meg Sterling between them in second place. Both the Sarawakian and Sterling were having their debut 100 miler. Sterling was the race winner of Dark 45 in Hong Kong last season, an event coming up again on 1 October. Amazingly, all three women would suddenly find themselves together at the 106km aid station before the second sunset of their race. Sterling was struggling with knee pain and was reduced to power hiking the rest of the distance - which she did, and so third place was hers. Behind, Yvette Chong was the last survivor as all other women pulled out, but Yvette also had to throw in the towel at km 136 suffering from gastroentretis. Unsurprisingly, Sally’s raw talent came to the fore and she completed the final 50 km in first place to win in 42 hours. A welcome victory for the 2022 vice-ATM champion, which will be confidence booster with a view to what is still coming later this year.
Penang-based Briton Alex Tilley took the 100km race, his second ATM win of the season after V Trail in Laos in February. Tilley had to work for it especially in the first half, when Achmad Tanjong, Jeffery Budin, Lim Wen Shan and Hijazi Rija Bin Mat Juri were keeping up and even setting the pace. Budin won UTOP in Penang last year and had the confidence he runs well on these trails, Tanjong showed in Mantra last month to be in great shape and Lim Wen Shan was the short distance dominator in Malaysia a few years ago, but now moving up in distance. For a while, it actually looked like Lim Wen Shan was going to drop the others. Then, the additional kilometers compared to what he is used to in race trim still proved to be a big ask. Tilley and Budin took over command, and soon after Tilley would be on his own. Budin did not give up easily and was hanging just six to ten minutes back for quite a while until he realised that he was not going to close the gap anymore.
In the women’s 100km, Lim Siet Fah lived up to the expectations and won her second ATM race after last season’s Borneo TMBT 100. She was never really bothered by the others to obtain the victory. Her second result of the season after a fifth place in Sierra Madre Trail in Philippines, where she perhaps underperformed a bit. The battle for second and third on the podium was exciting to follow all race with many position changes between Roan Biguasen, Goh Pei Fen and Heliana Arshad. Their tussle continued right into the final section, and it was local Goh Pei Fen who outran the two others for second. Busy bee Biguasen scored her fourth ATM podium of the season in third.
