The Endurance Asia Podcast

Following an epic Asia Trail Master Finals at TMB in Borneo, we recap the event and catch up with male champion Jeff Campbell.

Check out all the footage from ATM Finals:

ATM Facebook

Male final Podium winners video

Male Podium:

Jeff Campbell - 09:49

Hisashi Kitamura - 09:51

Arnie Macarenes - 09:56

Female Podium:

Priya Rai - 11:00

Vanja Cnops - 12:36

Rashila Tamang - 13:13

We are back with an exciting weekend of ultra trail racing with the ATM Championship at the classic TMBT race in Sabah, Borneo. Endurance Asia will be live at the race and finish line on Saturday and in preparation, we caught up with Series Director, Kris Van de Velde and previous guest Chris Timms who will be represeting Singapore.

With Kris we discuss:

• How the ATM season has gone. Some of the highlights? Best performances, most exciting races, best courses.

• The structure of the ATM points system and the finals. How the countries compete against each other. 

• The reason for choosing TMBT as the final race.

• Who he expects to be at the pointy end of the male and female race

• The teams he expects to perform well

With Chris Timms we discuss:

• How he feels representing Singapore at the ATM finals?

• How ATM season has gone for him? The highlights?

• After a top 10 finish in 2022, What his expectations are for this year?

• Who he expects the podium to be? Winning team?

• His recent addition to the T8 ambassador list

• The new Singapore Running Club, Falcons and how that came to be.

• His plans / goals post ATM final

You can follow the race and live streaming at:

• ATM FB page

• Instagram Page

• Dot Tracker

You can follow Chris Timms at:

• Instagram

• Facebook

• SG Falcons RC Insta

This week we were joined by Natalia Dau, Rockstar Arms, to discuss what she has been up to for the past couple of years and more importantly, what’s coming up in the next couple of months.

We discuss:

• Her 4 marathons in Sydney, Singapore, Gold Coast, Tokyo last year

• The 4 ultras she ran in 2023, all of which she won and a couple of the ultras outright

• Her first book Run like a Woman

• Project1000, Natalie’s goal to run 1000km from Thailand to Singapore and raise $150k for GRLS charity

You can follow Project1000:

• www.project1000.run

• https://www.instagram.com/rockstararms

• The charity https://www.womenwin.org/grls/

Ric and Scott catch up after to discuss what’s been going on the world of Ultra Endurance including Tomo’s 3rd fun run at Barkley Marathons.

After another year of this awe inspiring event, we are joined by a survivor and finisher, Alice Mcleod and Mayank Vaid.

We first chat with Alice to discuss:

• Her back story, growing up in Perthshire, Scotland and moving to HK from London in 2019 and exploring the trails

• Her awareness of Four Trails from seeing the legend Nikki Jan finish in 2019

• Her training block for 2024 and the volume and focus

• Four Trails goal

• Sleep and nutrition strategy

• What next?? As the second Scottish lady to reach the green post box, Will Alice come back to follow Nikki Han and finish?

And then we are joined by Mayank Vaid at 43m mark to discuss:

• The 3rd year taking on the challenge, what convinced him to come back after surviving last year.

• How last year went? What he learned from last year that he adapted in 2024

• What he’s been up to since 2023 edition when he did HK marathon just 2 weeks after! Competing in Hyrox and 4 peaks race, triathlons, 15k swim. Was cross training a big part of his plan.

• We go into details about the 4 Peaks Race in HK

• His plan going in to 2024 edition.

• How he got his wife and eldest son Bono to crew him

• The last 30k of Lantau chasing the clock and the 60 hour cut off.

• The feeling to finally finish the challenge.

Hong Kong Four Trails continues to show why it is the most epic ultra running challenge in the Asia region. The community, the difficulty and the drama. It always an epic dotwatching and social media follow. Congrats to Andre, Paper, all the athletes and crew, photographers and everyone involved with this event.

We kick off the New Year with a look back at the most inspiring performances and challenges of the year just gone. In this special awards episode, we discuss the stories that moved us and the people who mattered. Here are the categories and nominees:

Male Athlete of the Year

• John Stingray Onifa with his clean sweep of wins at Asia Trail Masters races including the win in the final

• Tomokazu Ihara with his Four Trails win, Barkey Marathons Fun Run and Grand Slam

Female Athlete of the Year

• Eszter Csillag, who placed 3rd at Western States and a win at Oxfam Trailwalker Hong Kong and Izu

• Sunmaya Budha, who won multiple races across Asia

• Hau Ha, who put in a heroic 4th place at CCC plus wins at Doi Ithanon and Ultra Trail Australia

• Rashila Tamang overall winner of the Asia Trail Masters final 2023

Race / Challenge of the Year

• Doi Inthanon Thailand by UTMB

• Hong Kong 100

• Vietnam Mountain Marathon

• Rinjani 100

• Malaysian Mountain and Trail Festival

• Izu Trail Journey Japan

Fundraising of the Year

• Jo Loder Run for Freedom, running HK 5in5 Trails inc Tinworth Trail, raising HK$880K

Endurance Feat of the Year

• Vincere Zeng Everest Lhotse and K2. Listen to the episode here

• Le Thi Hang of Vietnam who ran a marathon every day in 2023  inc a 2nd place finish in VMM

• Mark Agnew kayaking north west passage. Listen to the episode here..

Listen to the episode to find out who the winners are..

We loved watching these people reset the limits of what’s possible in 2023 and would love to hear from you about who we missed. Here’s to even more amazing achievements in 2024!

Joined by Valentin Orange, we recap last weekends Doi Inthanon by UTMB in Chiang Mai Thailand, the major UTMB race of Asia.

We cover:

• Race organisation

• Location,

• Atmosphere at start/finish line

  The races:

• 50k

• 100k

• 100 mile

And we go in to Valentin’s past year covering Sange Sherpa as he documents his life running ultras every weekend.

You can follow Valentin at Insta Facebook www.valentinorange.com

Phil Snowden, a. military veteran, Personal Trainer and all round machine, joins us to talk about his crazy endurance exploits and the importance of strength and conditioning for endurance athletes..

• His back ground in growing up in the military and getting into Personal Training after the miliirtary

• His first DNF doing the 24 hour Tough Mudder in the US

• Ultra in the Antarctic, Borneo 100 miler

• Pushing and pulling a body weight sled for 46km across the UfIt gym for 50 hours

• Ultra triathlon, 300 miles on Ski erg, Rower and bike

• Then we get in to Hyrox, the years of training that led up to becoming the perfect athlete for Hyrox, concept for the race and plans to commit to the race in future.

You can read more in depth info into Phil’s endeavours and the date on his blog https://www.philsnowdencoaching.com/

Check him out on Insta

Ric Stockfis and Scott Puigh catch up after to discuss:

• Trasnslantau

• World Trail Majors

• Everything else going on in the ultra endurance scene

We are joined again by the Asia Adventure Journalist turned explorer, Mark Agnew. Having had Mark on the podcast 3 years ago discussing all of the amazing endurance feats he has covered for SCMP, he has become the story!

He shared on that podcast (you can listen here) his passion for arctic exploration and his only plans to tackle the north west passage and be the first human as part of the team to cross it!

Well he’s only gone and done just that. Along with a team of expedition kayakers from Texas, The Artic Cowboys, he has become the first person to cross the North West Passage by human power.

Wr cover:

• Preparation and planning. Original plan for 2021 delayed. How did you train for it. What were the records you were targeting?

• Logistics and funding, team. Equipment.

• Record temperatures in 2023 made the pass possible?

• Distances travelled every day. How much camping sleep time.

• Biggest challenges, best moments / worst moments

• What’s next?

Check out some videos of Mark on ITV and BBC

Ric and Scott then catch up after to discuss:

• Adventure Race World Series Championships and previous guest Jay Jantaraboon’s

 Of The North Face Adventure Team getting 5th place as part of the Brazil Multisport Team.

• Bigs Back Yard World Champs and previous guest Joshua Toh doing 75 yards

• Salomon Forest Force Race in Singapore

• What’s next in the calendar inc MMTF, UTMB Thailand etc

We are joined on stage at VMM by some of the elites preparing to run. We get to speak to

• Ha Hau

• Sange Sherpa

• Jeff Campbell

• Trùn Nguyễn

• David Lloyd

Follow them live for this weekend at https://live.dottrack.asia/mountainmarathon23/

We are joined for a live on stage interview at the Vietnam Mountain Marathon by T8 Athletes 

• Jeff Campbell

• Vanja Cnops

• Kristian Joergensen

• Stingray, John Ray Onifa

Follow them live for this weekend at https://live.dottrack.asia/mountainmarathon23/